


all good devils masquerade under the light (PJOstuck)

by BowandAroAce



Category: Homestuck, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Blood and Gore, Bullying, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Canon-Typical Violence, Dirk Strider and Dave's Bro Aren't the Same Person, Enemies to Friends, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Roxy Lalonde, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Trans Dave Strider, Underage Smoking, sexual tension is out platonic tension is in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BowandAroAce/pseuds/BowandAroAce
Summary: Dave had a penchant for weird things happening to him, and Karkat always seemed to get stuck with the people he hated most. But finding out they were both demigods? That was the final straw. Both boys were convinced that if the gods did exist, they must really hate their kids.Camp Half-Blood sent out a lot of quests, but Jade knew hers was special. She'd been at camp for less than a year, and she'd already gotten a quest to rescue two unknown demigods from their fate. The only downside was her questing buddies: the Crocs-wearing, chalk-eating camp weirdo Terezi Pyrope, and the "totally not jealous that Jade got a quest instead of him" Tavros Nitram. But no matter what, Jade wouldn't fail. She'd never hear the end of it from her friends if she did.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara/Tavros Nitram, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 77
Kudos: 70





	1. A gardener, a punk, and a scene kid walk into a Subway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello new readers!!! Thanks for clicking on my story! This is a Percy Jackson/Homestuck AU (that being, Homestuck characters in the setting of the Percy Jackson universe), but you don't need to have read Percy Jackson to understand this AU. This is a fun little side project, so while updates might be more infrequent, it should be a fun story. If you like the story, leave a comment! I love responding to feedback

The crows were cawing in the early morning Texas heat, and the Strider brothers were sword-fighting on the roof of the apartment complex.

The morning air was filled with the sounds of clashing blades and harsh footsteps. All of these were sounds which were most certainly disturbing their neighbors downstairs. Though, their older neighbors had all grown used to the noise, given that it was a daily ritual for the Striders. Despite all of the complaints that were filed against them, nothing had ever happened. And given that many residents were frightened of the older Strider brother, not many filed more than one complaint. For many years now it had been considered business as usual- it would’ve been out of the ordinary for them to _skip_ the five-to-six AM sword-fight. 

Lying on the roof in a weary heap was fifteen-year-old Dave Strider. He leaned on the handle of his own sword like a cane, which was the only thing keeping him partially upright. His aviator sunglasses were slipping off his face, but he adjusted them weakly.

Across from him stood his thirty-year-old brother and legal guardian, known to Dave only as ‘Bro.’ Pointed, dark sunglasses hid Bro’s expression, if he had one. In his hand was his own wickedly sharp sword. He stood relaxed in a way that felt dangerous, like he knew he had the upper hand, and that he didn’t really have to try against an opponent so small and tired, one that he’d beaten so many times before. They’d already been fighting for so long- he knew the ordeal was almost over anyway.

Dave heaved, and used his sword to pry himself off the ground. His whole body was trembling, but his blank stare matched his brother’s.

“Better,” Bro nodded in approval. “I didn’t have to tell you to get up this time.”

The crows sitting on the air conditioning unit cawed loudly. Dave didn’t say anything back to Bro, and just held his sword at the ready, like he was preparing to attack at a moment’s notice.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Bro went on. “It’s been an hour and a half.”

He didn’t need to tell Dave twice. His arm fell to his side limply, the sword lightly scraping against the ground. Normally the fights went on from five in the morning to six, and it was half past six. Dave had to get ready for school early, since he’d been saving up his money to get breakfast at Subway. After that, he’d have to go to school, which he knew he had to do because they’d give him detention for a week if they caught him skipping school this time. “Yeah, you better stop while you’re ahead, because I totally would’ve beat you this time,” Dave said to him, crossing his arms smugly.

Bro raised an eyebrow, his face hiding some hint of amusement. “Keep thinking that, maybe it’ll happen some day.”

Dave looked away, and started walking towards the door that led back inside. 

He pushed it open, which led right into the apartment’s stairwell. The heavyset door slammed behind him as he jogged down the stairs, with his sword still in his hand. The Striders’ apartment was on the top floor of the complex, so he didn’t have to walk down very many stairs before he reached the apartment door. He took his key to the apartment out of his pocket, and unlocked the door to let himself in.

As always, the apartment looked like a hurricane had hit it. Nobody had cleaned it in years, as Bro didn’t own any cleaning supplies, and the air smelled vaguely of rotten eggs and generally pungent, unpleasant stink. The whole place was full of creepy plush puppets and marionettes on strings hanging from the ceiling, with fancy collector’s katanas hung up on the walls as the only decoration. The microwave was full of puppets and the fridge was full of shitty swords, and the only actual food in the kitchen was leftover delivery pizza and lukewarm takeout sitting on the kitchen counter, because there wasn’t ever any space in the fridge. It had been that way for as long as Dave could remember. Bro didn’t cook, so Dave just had to hope that he’d order delivery for dinner, and Dave hid stolen food around his room for breakfast and lunch.

But today, he wasn’t having a shoplifted bag of potato chips for breakfast. He’d been saving up his money (that being: stray dollars and change he happened to find) to go to Subway.

He walked across the main room of the apartment to the back, where his bedroom was. 

He shut his bedroom door behind him just as he heard the front door opening, and Bro walked inside the apartment. Once he heard this, Dave kicked a makeshift door-stop in place, so Bro wouldn’t be able to open his door from the outside. Dave took a minute to examine his room- it was still messy, but not quite as gross as the rest of the apartment.

“Yeah, I’m so ready for Subway,” Dave mumbled. He talked to himself a lot.

First thing was first, Dave walked over to the shelves set up on the wall, next to his window. On the shelf, there was a plethora of trinkets and fossils and bugs frozen in amber. Behind some of the rocks and animal skulls, there was a dollar-store pencil case, which jingled with coins when Dave grabbed it. In there was all of Dave’s savings, which would be all spent with the breakfast at Subway, but having his first decent meal in a while would be well worth it. 

After getting the pencil case full of money, he got his backpack, which was sitting on top of his bed, and started packing his stuff for school. He grabbed his homework which he hadn’t even started and a book he was supposed to be reading for English class. He had yet to read any of it- reading wasn’t Dave’s forte, as he had dyslexia. He walked over to his desk, which was really just a big wooden board on top of four stacks of cinderblocks. He grabbed his school laptop, and put that in his backpack too. Once he’d put all his papers, computer, and pencil-case-wallet into his backpack, he just needed his skateboard. He found the skateboard hidden in his closet under a stack of dirty clothes, and he tucked it under his arm.

Within ten or fifteen minutes of gathering his stuff and waiting, he was ready to go.

He moved the door-stop out of the way with his foot and cracked the door open just enough for him to peer outside. He lowered his aviator shades and looked across the room. The T.V. was turned on, and he could assume that Bro was on the couch, watching it. If he was lucky, maybe he’d be able to sneak past him without any questions asked. He had his backpack on the floor next to him, and he picked it up and slung it over his shoulders.

Dave opened the door fast, so that it wouldn’t creak too loudly. He was lucky that the whole apartment was carpeted, so his Converse hardly made any noise where he stepped. As he stepped out of his room, he was right in his prediction that Bro was on the couch, watching T.V. Dave walked softly across the main room, holding his breath the whole time.

“Where are you going?” Bro said from the couch.

At first, Dave flinched, nearly dropping his skateboard. “School.” He didn’t stop walking- he was already so close.

“You never leave for school this early,” Bro started to say, but Dave was already out the door.

As the front door closed behind him, Dave’s speed-walk turned into a run. He bolted to the stairwell, and began down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. There were so many floors to the apartment complex, and so many stairs to run down, but Dave didn’t slow down even though he was still tired from the sword-fighting practice. The only good thing that all that ‘training’ had done for him was to build up his endurance, so he could get down all those stairs fast, and impress girls in P.E. at school. He clutched his skateboard tightly with both hands, and he lept down the final four stairs to reach the ground floor.

He leaned against the wall for a moment to catch his breath. Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have ran the whole way down. After all, it wasn’t like Bro was going to chase after him or anything. Dave had tried to run away from home before, and Bro did not give a shit. He knew that Dave would come back- he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Now at the bottom of the stairs, Dave began walking towards the double glass doors that led outside. He pushed open the doors with his hip, and stepped onto the sidewalk.

It was a great view of downtown Houston, and it really made Dave feel small.

He put his skateboard down on the sidewalk, and stepped onto it. As he started down the path, the few pedestrians that were walking near him got out of his way, and he began his journey towards Subway.

Dave didn’t have what most would consider to be a conventional living situation. For one, he lived with his older brother as his legal guardian as opposed to his parents. Dave had lived with Bro since he was three. Dave didn’t remember very much his biological parents, and Bro never liked to talk about them. He’d just known that they’d never been much of a ‘happy family,’ and it was something of a touchy subject in the Strider apartment. There were a lot of touchy subjects in the Strider apartment. Dave’s situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Bro had to be one of the most paranoid people on the planet. Dave had no idea why Bro insisted on all the quote en quote “training” with weapons, and he knew that it wasn’t something normal kids did. He’d figured that out a while ago. When he asked Bro about it, he’d just said, “It’s a dangerous world out there for kids like you.” Neither of them ever brought it up again. Dave didn’t dare to question the way he was forced to live- he knew that asking questions would make it worse. That was what made it worse for Dirk, after all. There was a reason Dirk had the guts to actually run away.

He snapped out of his thoughts and leaned to the side on his skateboard, turning the corner to another street. Only a few minutes later, he actually reached Subway. He was surprised that they opened as early as seven AM, and he was sure that he’d be their first customer of the day. He brushed his hair out of his face and slowed to a stop in front of the sandwich shop.

Picking up his skateboard from the ground, he pushed open the door and walked inside.

The whole store was empty, except for him and the employees at the counter. It had only _just_ opened for the day, and not many people went to Subway for breakfast. But as far as Dave was concerned, it was the perfect breakfast.

He walked up to the counter, feeling nothing but hubris.

He ordered a steak and cheese sandwich, which was his usual order when he had the chance to go to Subway. When he emptied out the pencil case to count up the final price of the sandwich, the cashier looked devastated by all the coins Dave placed on the countertop.

After an awkwardly long time of counting coins, they finally had all the money they needed. Dave got his sandwich, and he had thirty cents left over.

He sat down at one of the tables, tucked his skateboard under his chair, and hung his backpack off of the back of the chair. After unwrapping his sandwich from all the paper that the Subway workers always wrapped them up in, he took his earbuds out of his pocket. He put them in his ears and plugged it into his phone, and turned on some music. Peacefully eating his breakfast sandwich with obscure music playing was possibly the calmest he’d been in weeks. It was therapeutic.

Even with his music at full volume, he noticed the front door of the shop open out of the corner of his eye, and he noticed a small group of people come walking inside.

Dave looked over to see who they were. Instantly, they caught his eye.

They were three kids who were all about Dave’s age- two girls and a boy, and the three of them were definitely difficult to miss. It was strange to see folks like them in a Subway at seven in the morning. All three of them were rather… eccentric.

In the lead of the group of three, was a Polynesean girl with long hair and round, thick-framed glasses. She was wearing a white shirt and overall shorts, with a large brimmed straw hat as if she was about to do some gardening, despite being in downtown Houston. Next to her was the other girl, who was wearing quite possibly every color visible to the human eye. From her hair dyed bright red and teal to her sparkly red crocs, she looked like a 2005 scene kid on psychedelics. The third kid was a punk Afro-Latino boy, with a ton of piercings, beat-up combat boots, and his curly black hair in a mohawk. With them all next to each other, they were some of the weirdest goddamn people Dave had ever laid eyes on, and he went to public highschool; a _breeding ground_ for weird looking people.

Dave, being an expert at minding his own business, managed to ignore them as they walked up to the counter. The Subway employees there didn’t even bat an eye at their weirdness.

They ordered their sandwiches, paid uneventfully, and sat down with them at a nearby booth.

Now, Dave didn’t consider himself a nosy person. He didn’t know anybody who would consider him a nosy person. But given the fact that this group of kids his age were just so unfathomably weird, and something about them seemed a little off, anyone would’ve been a little bit nosy. At least, that was what Dave told himself to ease his conscience as he paused his music and discreetly took out his earbuds.

 _It’s not eavesdropping,_ he told himself. _If they don’t want to be heard, they shouldn’t talk so loudly in a public area with only one other fucking person._

“This is the worst place they could’ve sent us.” The scene girl said. “It smells awful.”

“Hey now, you _wanted_ to come with me!” The gardener girl took a bite out of her sandwich, which looked like ninety-nine-percent vegetables.

The punk boy spoke in a surprisingly soft voice. “Terezi, you don’t know how, uh, rancid the big city smell can get. I mean, speaking as someone who grew up in Chicago, uh, this is pretty much nothing. Weirdly enough, the sweltering heat masks the smell of the sewer, if Houston has one.”

“Not what I mean,” the scene girl took a sip of soda. “I mean, this place smells _bad._ You won’t understand if I describe it- it smells like dry, sandy shadows and cherry garcia ice cream.”

“Oh…” the punk boy’s voice trailed off. “You mean like… monster-bad?”

The scene girl nodded sagely.

Gardener-girl put on a pretty, gentle smile, looking towards the other two kids. “Oh, there’s no need to worry! They told us that it tends to be like that in big cities just because there’s more people. Besides, those kids need us, and we’ll sure do our darn best to make sure nothing happens to them! As long as we stick together, and stick to the plan, nothing bad will happen. Trust me! We even checked in with Jane already, so we’re on schedule. It’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“Don’t jinx it.” the punk boy muttered. “We fought enough on the way here.”

Dave furrowed his brows, processing what he was hearing. It seemed like these kids were new in town, but they didn’t seem like siblings, and none of their parents were anywhere in sight. The gardener girl mentioned something about ‘those kids’ needing them. Maybe they were a part of some charity organization to help children? They mentioned fighting on the way here, but he couldn’t tell if they meant arguing or... something else. And whatever they meant about ‘monsters’ was even more confusing. Dave couldn’t put a finger on it, but something about them seemed a little weirder than normal, and it wasn’t just their appearances. It was some kind of vibe they gave off which was both foreign and disturbingly familiar.

Once he’d finished his sandwich, Dave took his backpack from the back of his chair and put it on, and picked up his skateboard from under his chair. He gathered all of the trash from his sandwich’s wrapping, and crumpled it up into a ball of stained paper.

He stood and walked across the shop to where the trash cans were. After he’d thrown away all the trash, he turned around to walk out of the shop.

He nearly ran into the scene girl, who had been standing right behind him.

Dave jumped, backed away upon seeing her. “Whoa, watch where you’re going.”

She cackled in her squeaky voice. “Oh boy, I’d sure love too, but that’s not really possible! Best I can do is smell where I’m going! Sorry I nearly ran you over there, coolkid.”

“It’s fine,” Dave did a double-take, looking at her more closely. Now that he had a better look at her, he noticed her red cat-eye shades and a gaze that seemed to stare off into space. Not only that, she held a long white cane with a red stripe at the bottom and a ribbon at the handle that was looped around her wrist. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were…”

“That I was blind?” She finished for him, cackling again. “No worries. Could you hand me an extra straw?”

Dave nodded, but remembering that she couldn’t see it, he said “Yeah, sure,” out loud.

Once she got the straw, she turned around to head back to her table. Both of her friends looked at Dave weirdly, and he instantly felt embarrassed. He didn’t mean to come off as insulting to their friend- he hadn’t known that she was blind! The gardener girl and scene girl started back up a conversation when she got there. Dave began walking towards the door to leave, when he noticed that the punk boy was still looking at him. He looked like he recognized Dave, or was trying to determine if he knew him from somewhere. But, he turned away from Dave and looked back at his friends.

Dave chose to try and forget this weird encounter, and walked out the front door of Subway. He set his skateboard down on the sidewalk again, and began towards the direction of his school.


	2. Karkat loses another potential date

Karkat was an easy target for bullying- he’d been one all his life, though it had gotten worse now that he was in high school. He was messy-haired, short, and chubby, and was infamous around school for having a really bad temper. Because he was mostly harmless, yet easily angered, people often bothered him just to get a reaction- and they most _certainly_ got one. He had some of the most creative, swear-word-infused insults most people would ever hear.

Yet in Karkat’s opinion, there was one person who was worse than all of the bullies. Dave Strider; the kid who’d been the bane of Karkat’s very existence ever since they got seated next to each other in algebra.

Dave didn’t bully Karkat, in fact, he wasn’t mean at all. He was just one of the most annoying people Karkat had ever met, and he’d grown to hate Dave for no good reason.

When Karkat was sitting in algebra, and felt a pencil poke him in the shoulder, he wasn’t happy.

“Hey, Karkat,” Dave said under his breath, so the teacher couldn’t hear. They were seated very close to the teacher’s desk, due to their tendency to cause trouble. Dave would constantly annoy him, and when he lashed out and told Dave to fuck off, _he_ was the one who got in trouble, not Dave. That infuriating monotone voice of his never meant good things for Karkat.

Karkat’s face was in a permanent scowl, but he scowled even more when he heard this. “What the deep-fried fuck do you want?”

“Did you do the homework?” he asked. “And can I copy off of it?”

Karkat looked over at Dave, and rolled his eyes. Dave always looked so stupid, with his stupid bleach-blond hair, his stupid sunglasses that he wore inside, and his stupid need to make stupid jokes when it wasn’t necessary. “No,” he glared venomously. “If you didn’t do it, that’s your fault.”

“Damn, okay,” Dave sighed. “It was worth a try.”

“It’s really not,” Karkat hunched his shoulders in irritation. Someday, he hoped there would be a day that Strider would finally stop making his life difficult, but today was not that day.

The teacher, Mr. Trace, was busy filling out class attendance on his computer, and there was some idle chatter around the classroom. These first few minutes of class were supposed to be spent doing practice algebra worksheets that nobody really wanted to do. Karkat was spending this time writing in his personal notebook. Next to him, Dave was frantically filling out the homework sheet with absolutely bullshit answers, since it was better to get the answers wrong than to not fill them out, in Mr. Trace’s class. There was even some noise from outside in the hallway, since it was only first period and there were still some people who were late getting to class. Karkat looked up from his notebook when he heard the sound of the classroom door opening.

Entering the classroom were three kids who Karkat had never seen before in his life.

It was almost the end of the school year (only one week away), and Karkat had been taking Mr. Trace’s algebra class since August. He’d never seen these three kids in this class before, or _any_ class! He hadn’t seen these kids anywhere in school! And while it was a big school, they all would’ve been pretty hard to miss. Maybe they were sophomores? Both of the girls didn’t look much older than freshmen.

The girl in the lead, with round glasses and overalls, cleared her throat awkwardly, looking over at Mr. Trace. “Excuse me, sir, is this algebra one? Um, we’re guest students, they said you got an email?”

Mr. Trace looked up, and evaluated the three weird kids standing there. For a moment, it looked like his eyes glazed over, like he was in some kind of trance.

He snapped out of it. “Oh, yes, I got that email! You’re… Jade, Tavros, and Terezi, right?”

The girl hummed in affirmation. “Yup! I’m Jade, these are my friends!”

“Well, nice to see you got here okay,” Mr. Trace said. “You can take a seat at the table in the back, and I’ll be with you in a minute. I just have to start the class and everything.”

“Thank you!” Jade smiled, and she began walking toward the back of the class. The boy and girl who followed her were even harder to miss; the boy was wearing all black even in 80 degree heat and had a mohawk, and the girl walked with a probing cane- _she was blind._ Karkat definitely would’ve noticed someone like her. Especially with her horrendous fashion sense of a Hawaiian shirt and paint-stained cutoff shorts, and hair dyed bright red and teal. Despite all of the blindingly bright colors she wore, Karkat had to admit that she was pretty. In a crazy, unhinged kind of way, but she was pretty.

As they walked past, Karkat felt like he snapped out of something too. Wait, _guest students?_ What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He hadn’t heard of a term even remotely like that before, it didn’t make any sense. Karkat looked around at the classroom, looking to see if anybody else was as confused as he was, or at least wondering why the hell we had ‘guest students’ in the first place. Yet, as he looked around, nobody even batted an eye. Everybody completely glazed over this as if it was completely normal.

Everybody… except for Dave.

“What the hell, those are the kids I saw at Subway,” Dave said under his breath.

“Huh?” Karkat looked over at him, also whispering. “What were you doing at Subway?”

“Getting a sandwich, the hell do you think I was doing?” Dave raised an eyebrow. “Anyway, I overheard them talking in the shop, and it was crazy. They were saying that like, they’d traveled a long way on their own, and that it smelled like monsters or something? Then the Jade girl mentioned something about helping kids or someone needing them? It was super weird.”

Karkat frowned, and cast a skeptical glance towards the back of the class. The three kids were seated at the table, speaking in hushed tones. “Have you ever heard of ‘guest students’ before?”

Dave shook his head. “No, but it doesn’t sound _too_ outlandish.”

“Something about it seems off to me,” Karkat started to say, but was interrupted by Mr. Trace.

“Karkat, please be quiet, I’m trying to start a class over here.” Mr. Trace said.

Karkat was flabbergasted, and gaped at his teacher with his arms as in sides in incredulous dismay. “What?! Dave was _literally_ the one talking for most of it, why do _I_ always get blamed for this kind of stuff?! This happens literally every time!”

“Then neither of you should be talking,” he narrowed his eyes. “Now, as I was _trying_ to say…”

Algebra started like it did any other day. Briefly, Mr. Trace mentioned that we had ‘guest students’ in the classroom, gesturing to the kids in the back, and they all briefly introduced themselves. The girl that Karkat thought was pretty was named Terezi. They didn’t mention where they were from, but no one seemed to question it. Mr. Trace then told us not to be _extra_ good today, because we were making an impression. Like that was going to happen- somehow Karkat always got the worst of luck with his classes, and seemed to attract all of the troublemaking, disruptive students, and the classes he got stuck with were always with the _‘bad’_ kids. Kids like Dave. Aside from that passing comment, and a few glances to the back of the room, the class was completely normal. Despite all that, Karkat _knew_ that something was wrong. He had a gut feeling, and he couldn’t manage to pay attention during the whole class.

He tried to discreetly glance at the new kids in the back. They were still talking amongst themselves in quiet voices, but he could’ve _sworn_ he caught them looking at him. Throughout the entire period, he felt as if he was being watched, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

When algebra ended, school continued on like nothing weird was happening.

But, as people were leaving the room, Karkat noticed that the two of the new, weird students were talking to Dave. The two girls, Jade and Terezi, were chatting him up like he was an old friend.

Karkat’s face flushed in jealousy, and he forced himself to look away.

How was it that Dave managed to ruin Karkat’s chances with every single girl he ever showed interest in? It wasn’t like he could compete with Dave, with all his nonchalant charms and fake ‘cool guy’ demeanor, so he just had to watch and let Dave ruin Karkat’s chances with her. By ‘ruining Karkat’s chances’ with the girls he liked, Dave didn’t say mean things about him, or make fun of him in front of the girl. He just always found a way to prompt Karkat into humiliating himself in front of whatever girl he liked. This had been happening ever since the start of the year, when he met Dave, and Karkat was convinced that Dave had something against him, and was doing this on purpose. Now, he was doing it again.

Karkat grabbed his backpack and left the room in a very bad mood.

The next few classes went by uneventfully. The three ‘guest students’ were nowhere to be seen, so Karkat assumed that they were in a different class. It’s not like they’d arrived at their school for the sake of seeing Karkat and no nobody else. For a while, as he went through the first half of his classes, he nearly forgot that the odd squad of ‘guest students’ had ever been there in the first place.

It wasn’t until the end of fourth period that anything else weird happened.

Fourth period was his French Two class, and he’d been forced by his teacher to stay late, even though the next period was Karkat’s lunch period. Karkat had gotten in trouble for calling somebody a ‘rat bastard’ during class. The teacher, while not fully hearing _what_ Karkat had said, had recognized that he’d spoken in English. So she reminded him that he could only speak French during her class, so Karkat responded by calling her a ‘rat-bastard’ in French. He got sent to hall and was asked to stay late after class as punishment.

When the teachers finally let him go, the hallways were empty. Passing period was already over.

Karkat grumbled some curses to himself, and started down the hallway to the cafeteria. Now that he was late, the lunch line would be so long, and he’d half to wait _forever_ just to get his lunch.

But he stopped in his tracks when he noticed another person on the other side of the hall, standing by the lockers.

It was Terezi, to Karkat’s shock, with her horribly patterned Hawaiian shirt, and probing cane. She looked like someone had yelled at her to _“act natural”_ as she was staring intently at a piece of paper that looked like a map or floor plan of the school. Why was that? She was blind, she wouldn’t be able to read it. Maybe it was some kind of braille paper, so that she could feel what was on it with her fingers- nevermind, she was licking the paper. After licking it, she turned the paper right-side-up, like she’d realized that she was reading it upside-down by licking it.

Karkat approached tentatively, a little intimidated by the overwhelming weirdness of this girl. “Um, hey,” he greeted once he walked up to her.

Terezi jumped. “Woah, don’t sneak up on me like that! Didn’t smell you there.”

“Jesus, my bad,” Karkat gritted his teeth, already feeling like an idiot. “You were in my math this morning, so I know you’re new here. I get the feeling that you might be lost. I mean, being a guest student and also being blind and all, you maybe don’t know your way around? And I saw you… licking the paper. If you need to go somewhere, I can take you, if you want.”

“That‘d be great,” Terezi replied. Her voice was squeaky, and kind of gravely. “I need to go down to the cafeteria. I was just gonna have lunch with my friends there.”

Karkat blinked, surprised that she’d agreed. “Well, great! That’s where I was heading too! Maybe I could sit with you at lunch?” Karkat felt like he was being too bold. He wasn’t the best at making friends, and he wasn’t sure if this was the way to do it. Terezi had already agreed to let Karkat take her down to the cafeteria, he didn’t want to push his luck.

“Depends,” Terezi shrugged. “I’d at least like to know your name first.”

“Karkat Vantas.”

“Huh?” Terezi froze, like she was struck with realization. It melted away, replaced with a goofy smile. “Oh, yeah! Karkat! I’ve heard all about you. Sure, you can sit with us.”

“Thanks.” Karkat winced. Had she already heard all the mean stuff kids said about him? About how he was short-tempered, and impulsive, and got into arguments with students and teachers alike? All of that was true, Karkat knew that, but it wasn’t exactly the first impression that he would want to make on someone. Especially someone like Terezi. Karkat was sure lucky that Terezi was blind, because his face was red from embarrassment.

“Don’t mention it. Thank _you_ for walking me down to the cafeteria. Such a gentleman.” Terezi cackled. “Let’s get going already- I’m hungry.”

Karkat helped to guide Terezi down the stairs, and down the hall that led to the cafeteria. She didn’t need much help, she just needed to be told what direction to walk in, just like anyone who didn’t really know their way around a building.

They entered the room that held the lunch line- where the students got and paid for all their food. Much to Karkat’s dismay, the line was really long. But, since Terezi was standing in line with him, it wasn’t as bad. She seemed interesting, albeit eccentric, and she definitely wasn’t boring to talk to. Some time later, the two of them had finally made it through the line, and they got to actually pick out their lunches and pile food on their trays. Karkat helped Terezi with her lunch since she couldn’t read the labels on anything, and Karkat managed to steer her away from the school’s infamously disgusting mashed potatoes.

After they’d finished picking out their lunches, Karkat realized he had another question for Terezi. One that had been bothering him all day. “Hey, you never mentioned where you were from, like what school you came from? Was there a transfer program, or-”

“Honey, do you have money to pay for your lunch? Your account is empty.” The lunch lady interrupted him.

Karkat looked over at her, embarrassed. “Oh, right. Sorry.” He dug through the pockets of his grey sweatpants, and after looking past his phone, house key, and random scraps of paper, he pulled out a few crumpled dollar bills. He dropped the money into the lunch lady’s open hand, and received a few coins in change. It was then when he realized that Terezi was no longer with him, and he looked around for where she’d gone to.

She was standing by the door that led into the cafeteria, waiting for him. Her lunch tray was in one hand, and her cane was in the other. Karkat let out a sigh of relief- he’d feared that she’d ditched him.

Karkat caught up to her, and she noticed as he approached. “Hey, you never answered my question.”

“What question?” Terezi raised an eyebrow. “Come on, let’s go, my friends are waiting.”

Before Karkat could repeat himself, Terezi had already walked out the door, and into the cafeteria. Identical tables surrounded by too many or too few chairs were scattered throughout the room in no particular pattern.

Karkat scanned the room, looking across the sea of tables to find the other guest students, the ones he could only assume were the friends that Terezi had been talking about. They weren’t that hard to spot, with the ridiculous straw hat that Jade was wearing. She was sitting with Tavros at a nearly empty table that wasn’t far from where Karkat and Terezi were standing. Karkat tapped Terezi on the shoulder, and let her know that he’d spotted her friends. The two of them walked towards the table, and as they did Karkat noticed a third person sitting at the table. A third person, the sight of whom made Karkat shake with anger: _Dave._

When we reached the table, Karkat instantly wanted to ask Dave _“What are_ you _doing here?”_ but he realized that would be rude, and he didn’t want to make himself look like an asshole in front of possibly the only friends he’d be able to make.

“Hey guys!” Terezi greeted her friends with a big grin. “This is the famed Karkat that Dave’s been talking so much about.”

“Oh!” Jade’s eyes lit up, looking delighted. “It’s so nice to meet you, Karkat!”

Karkat stared at Dave. “You were walking about me?”

“Yeah!” Terezi clapped me on the back, and sat down at the table. “In third period we had another class with Dave, and he was telling us all about how you guys are such good friends! He was telling us about how funny you are, and that you’re really cool, and also that you’re single? Don’t know why he told us that.” Terezi laughed lightheartedly.

Karkat sat down at the table, glaring daggers at Dave.

He looked back at Karkat with two thumbs up, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Dave was winking behind his sunglasses. Wait a minute- was Dave trying to _wingman_ Karkat? Karkat groaned internally. _You’ve got to be kidding me,_ he thought. If getting a date with Terezi wasn’t already a doomed mission, Dave would be making it that way by trying to be a wingman. Karkat couldn’t believe Dave, especially that he’d been saying that they were _friends._

“Thanks to both of you for being so nice!” Jade smiled, glancing between Karkat and Dave. “We were all a little bit nervous about visiting a new school, so it’s _really_ nice to have some people who are willing to reach out and show us around!”

Dave waved his hand dismissively. “I’m all about helping folks- just because I’m cool doesn’t mean I’m not humble.”

Dave was neither cool nor humble, but anyone who knew Dave knew that he was a master of bullshittery. He made up shit on the whim, particularly when he didn’t turn in his homework and started making up excuses as to why he didn’t have it. It hardly ever worked, since Dave wasn’t a very _good_ liar, it was still pretty entertaining. He would try to bullshit the way to the top of a monarchy if he had the chance. Nobody could beat Dave Strider in a bullshit-off, he was simply the best there was.

Karkat glanced over at Tavros, who hadn’t spoken the whole conversation and was picking at his food absentmindedly. Tavros wasn’t someone you wouldn’t expect to see in their school, since it was a pretty conservative area in Texas, and he was dressed like a punk, wearing all black with a mohawk and a bunch of piercings. Karkat got the feeling that Tavros was either from a more progressive area, or just really brave.

“So, how long are you guys staying at our school?” Karkat asked, taking a bite from his sandwich.

The three kids all glanced at each other, like they were trying to converse telepathically.

Jade hummed. “Probably not for long, a couple days at most. Just as long as it takes, you know? And I mean, the whole thing might get cut short. You never know what could happen when there’s so many of us in one place. All sorts of things go wrong.”

Karkat’s eyes narrowed. “...So many of _who_ in one place?”

“She just means, uh,” Tavros quickly filled in for Jade. “Problem kids. At our school we’re kind of considered problem kids, I’m sure you understand. Terezi has a history of vandalism, and I have a bit of a kleptomania problem, and Jade…” his voice trailed off. “Well, you know how it is. The three of us kind of tend to attract weird stuff happening to us, and we always get blamed for it.”

“No kidding?” Dave sighed. “Same here. Me and Karkat can sure relate.”

“Speak for yourself,” Karkat interjected. “Maybe Dave’s a bit of a problem kid, but I’m not. And sure, weird shit happens and I always get blamed, but it’s never _my_ fault!”

Dave actually laughed. “Really? C’mon, Karkat, how many times have you gotten in trouble for swearing in class, or arguing with the teacher, or throwing a temper tantrum because some kid who was picking on you. I mean, you weren’t in the wrong for any of those things, but don’t act all high and mighty.”

Karkat sunk down into his chair, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. Dave was right, but he didn’t want to admit it.

Terezi cleared her throat, and leaned forward in his seat, her hair threatening to dip into her plate of pasta. “So, now that you guys are basically our new friends, we were wondering if you’d be willing to hang out with us after school tomorrow. I think we have a lot to talk about.”

Dave and Karkat shared a look. It seemed that for once they agreed on something.

“Sure,” Karkat replied with a nod. “Where should we meet up after school tomorrow?”

Terezi shrugged, her shit-eating grin returning to her face. “Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll come find you.”

⁂

“So, how was school?”

Karkat stared down at the dinner table, and scooped up a last spoonful of soup. His eyes trailed upwards, and looked across the table at his father. Karkat’s father was an civics professor at the nearby university, and had been raising Karkat by himself ever since Karkat was born. Every night, when they ate dinner together, he asked him how school had been that day, and Karkat’s were always pretty blank. It was always _“Not the worst. I got an A on my essay about Romeo and Juliet,”_ or _“It sucked. Dave got me in trouble for yelling during class.”_ There wasn’t much variety.

“Actually,” Karkat’s usual grimace hid the ghost of a smile. “It was pretty good. We have these transfers- or, I guess, guest students. They're are in my first period. And I think I might be on the way to making friends with them.

His father’s eyes widened, and he smiled. “Oh, Karkat, that’s wonderful. See, I told you you’d make some friends now that you’re in high school.”

Karkat sighed dejectedly. “Yeah, it only took me the entire school year. School gets out in a week, and I have to study for finals, and they’re only gonna be here for a couple of days. I don’t even know if I’ll have time to hang out with them. And sure, we can stay in touch after they leave, but it’s hard to make plans with people you don’t see everyday. At least I’ll have a more open schedule when summer hits.”

“Speaking of summer…” his father raised an eyebrow at Karkat. “I was actually thinking about maybe sending you to a summer camp.”

“A summer camp?” Karkat frowned. “No way. You know I’m not an ‘outdoorsy’ person.”

“It’s a special camp,” his father insisted. “A place where I’m sure you’ll make lots of other friends, all kids who are like you. I think you’d like it, if you give it a try. Besides, it was a summer camp that was suggested for me to send you to… by your mother.”

Karkat dropped his spoon in his bowl. “I’m sorry, _What?”_

His father wrung his hands, looking solemn. “She told me when you were still a newborn, right before she left. I didn’t understand it then, but I think it’s time.”

“Mom left us without child support or even a goddamn photo, but she suggested I go to a summer camp for kids like me?!” Karkat laughed bitterly. “That’s rich. She must’ve been _real_ smart to realize that I would’ve been totally fucked up in the brain to figure I had to go to a whole-ass summer camp with other ‘kids like me.’ Or maybe _she_ went to this summer camp, and figured I’d turn out just like her; a screwup!”

“Enough!” his father exclaimed, shouted over Karkat’s angry voice. “Just…” his voice trailed off, seemingly at a loss for what to say. “Just go to your room. I’ll clean up the dishes- we’ll talk more about this later.”

Karkat stood up abruptly, still trying to hold in his anger. “I was just leaving.”

Without another word to his father, he stormed away from the dinner table. He ran all the way up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he slammed the door shut.


	3. A hall monitor writes the late-slip of doom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey, I updated! This chapter turned out longer than I expected. Enjoy, folks.

This was the second happiest that Dave had ever been going to school. The first happiest time was in second grade, when Dave’s homeroom class had won the annual pizza party. But today, going to school, he really had something to look forward to. He had friends waiting for him. Dave wasn’t disliked by many people at school (Karkat made up for all the hatred the other students lacked), but he’d never really had any friends. Not like the people who he was starting to make friends with.

When Dave arrived at school in the morning, he didn’t feel any dread- he just felt excitement. He walked briskly towards his first-period algebra class. Once he reached the class, his new friends were already there. They were actually sitting around Karkat’s desk talking, with him.

“Hey y’all,” Dave greeted, hooking his backpack around the back of his chair.

“Oh, hi Dave!” Jade instantly greeted with a warm smile. She seemed to be the ringleader of the group in a manner of speaking, or at least she wanted to act like it. She was also wearing the same clothes as yesterday, minus the straw hat.

“Oh look, it’s Dave, professional dickface.” Karkat mumbled dryly under his breath, glancing up at Dave before looking back down at the papers on his desk.

Dave frowned. “The fuck did I do to you?”

“Hey, no swearing,” Mr. Trace called from the front of the class. Dave’s face flushed, embarrassed. “Karkat, Dave, both of you need to stay after class, you’re out of warnings.”

Karkat opened his mouth to argue, but closed it again. “What’s the point?” he muttered. “The world hates me, and it doesn’t need a reason.”

Tavros exchanged a glance with Dave- some kind of shared exasperation with Karkat’s bad mood. Tavros was pretty quiet, but he seemed cool to Dave. As least, cool personality-wise. It was late May in Texas, and Tavros was wearing a dark flannel jacket and patched up black jeans. Dave thought that kind of outfit in weather like this could actually make someone melt. He had no idea how Tavros didn’t mind at all.

“What’s with the bad mood?” Terezi asked Karkat, tilting her head.

Karkat sighed dramatically. “I had an argument with my dad last night and it’s no better. It’s no big deal, I’m just… super fucking annoyed with him.”

“Ooh, sorry about that,” Terezi gritted her teeth, and offered a look of sympathy.

When class started, the three guest students had to go to the back of the class, sitting at the table back there. Dave wondered what they were doing, and he was curious about the concept of guest students again. What were they doing here, just… watching the class? He wasn’t sure. Like yesterday, class went on like normal, with barely an acknowledgement that the guest students were there. The class dragged on agonizingly, and the whole time Dave wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t, he was thinking too much to pay attention. At the end of the class, Mr. Trace reminded Dave and Karkat that they had to stay behind. Students go up to leave for their next class, but Dave stayed seated at his desk. He tapped his pencil against the desk, watching as the other students left.

As Jade, Terezi, and Tavros were walking by them to leave the room, they stopped, and Jade took a moment to stop and talk to them. “We’ll wait for you outside, so at least we can still walk with you to your next class.” Jade said to Dave and Karkat.

Karkat’s face softened a little. “You don’t have to-” he cut himself off. “I mean. Thanks.”

As everyone else left, Karkat and Dave stayed there at their desks. Mr. Trace’s eyes watched them with disappointment, but not surprise.

Time seemed to drag on, and Dave laid his head down on the desk. At least his new friends didn’t think they were totally lame for getting in trouble, but Dave worried that _they_ might get in trouble for waiting for Dave and Karkat outside. Hall monitors were ruthless.

Dave cast a cautious glance over to Karkat, and luckily, his sunglasses hid his eyes as they looked over to the side. Karkat was sitting with his arms crossed indignantly and his face in his ever-permanent scowl. For a moment, Dave wondered about Karkat- Karkat was someone who considered himself a good kid, a good student, but who always seemed to get in trouble in every class he had. Dave was quite the opposite. Generally well liked among teachers and peers, yet a terrible student. Not only that, but Dave was someone who always seemed to get Karkat in trouble.

He frowned. For so long, Dave hadn’t really understood why Karkat hated him so much, but he could understand it now. Karkat held himself to such a high standard and couldn’t achieve it. Dave didn’t have any standard to hold himself to, and he realized with a twinge of guilt that he was acting pretty selfish. He only ever meant to act friendly to Karkat, but in his efforts he only embarrassed Karkat and got him in trouble.

 _Selfish, just like Dirk,_ a voice in the back of his head whispered to him.

 _Shut up,_ he told it, as if it was a real person he had a grudge against and not some self hating part of his subconscious.

“Alright, time’s up, both of you can go.” Mr Trace finally said after five minutes had passed.

Karkat stood up from his seat, muttering curses under his breath, and kicked his chair back under his desk. Dave stood up as well, and followed Karkat, and both of them walked together towards the door. Karkat was staring at the ground, and didn’t even look at Dave. Dave did feel a little bad that he’d gotten Karkat in trouble, but he knew that Karkat would be over it in a day, and would soon find a different thing to be mad at Dave about. Karkat opened the door, and it nearly hit Dave in the face as Karkat tried to slam it shut. Luckily, Dave caught the door before it hit him, and he opened it to follow Karkat into the hallway.

The hallway was completely deserted. Passing period was technically over, but even so, there were usually still stragglers in the hallway and people who were late to class, or skipping. But today, the hall was completely empty. Every classroom door was closed, and there wasn’t a single person in sight.

Dave and Karkat walked to the middle of the hallway, right next to the stairwell, leading down to the first floor. They could see down the hallway in both directions, and still, there was no one as far as the eye could see.

Karkat seemed to notice it as well. “Where is everybody?”

Dave looked around. The whole place seemed eerie without any people around, almost like it was some kind of liminal space. “No clue. It’s weird though.”

“This is giving me the fucking creeps,” Karkat shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, and crossed his arms. “And where are Terezi and Tavros and Jade? They said that they would wait for us, and I don’t think they’d just ditch us. Something doesn’t feel right. Maybe we should go and look for them.”

“Dude, chill,” Dave replied, a little frantically. He didn’t want to seem like he was freaking out, but Karkat’s sudden paranoia was getting to him as well. “It’s fine, just go to your next class.”

Karkat looked frustrated. “It’s not ‘fine!’ Something is wrong!”

Dave opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, he was interrupted by a voice yelling from down the hall to our right.

“Hey!” the voice yelled. “Neither of you go anywhere!”

Karkat and Dave both froze, and turned to search for the source of the voice. She wasn’t hard to spot, since she was the only other person in the whole hall. She was an older teenager, probably a senior, and she had a bright lanyard and badge around her neck. Dave’s heart dropped, and he bristled with irritation. _Great,_ he thought, _a fucking hall moniter._

The hall monitor came practically running down the hall, and Dave and Karkat looked at each other with shared expressions of tired confusion. When she finally reached the two boys, she stopped a few feet away from them abruptly and started searching through her pockets. She wore a fitted polo shirt- the kind one would expect to see a hall monitor wearing, and bootcut jeans, with her brown hair in twin braids down her shoulders and glasses. Her eyes narrowed with a critical, almost distasteful look on her face, looking at Dave and Karkat like she was evaluating them for some kind of health exam. Out of her pocket, she pulled out a pen and a stack of paper slips, which Dave knew was a stack of late-slips. He’d been late for class enough times to know.

“You boys are late to class,” she said, in a voice that sounded shrill and bossy. She held up her stack of late slips, and started writing on the top one. “I’m gonna have to write you up. What are your names?”

Dave sighed dejectedly. He’d gotten plenty of late-slips in his time, and knew that trying to argue would just get them into more trouble. “Dave Strider.”

The hall monitor nodded to herself as she wrote that down. “And you?” she looked at Karkat.

“Karkat Vantas.” Karkat grumbled, still looking paranoid.

“Right, right,” The hall monitor hummed. “And you two are the sons of…?”

Both Dave and Karkat were at a loss. Out of all the questions they could’ve been asked by the hall monitor, this was was pretty fucking absurd. They looked at each other, and back at her. They waited for a second to see if she would laugh it off, or give some sort of explanation for the comment she just made. But she didn’t. Her face stayed blank and serious, and it was clear that she hadn’t been joking- she was dead serious, and both boys were incredibly confused.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?!” Karkat glaring at her with chilling suspicion.

The hall monitor glared down at us, her piercing eyes narrowing behind her glasses. “Joke? Why would I be joking? I just want to know which gods you’re the children of, just to see if it’s worth it to challenge you to a fight. Or perhaps, you’re better for lunch.”

That last line sent a shiver down Dave’s spine

Dave took a step back, and Karkat quickly followed him. “What the fuck did you just say?!” Dave sputtered.

“Yes,” she nodded matter-of-factly. She was growing more unsettling with every passing moment. Her face turned even more cold and calculating as she took a deliberate step towards them. “Half-bloods make for very good eating!”

As if it couldn’t get any weirder, the _weirdest_ thing happened. Dave and Karkat began to back further away, eyes wide with abject horror as they watched the hall monitor begin to _transform._

It started at her legs. Sneakers and bootcut jeans seemed to melt away, instead leaving a pair of birdlike legs and large bird feet tipped with wicked black talons. The brown French-braids draped over her shoulders melted into plumes of brown feathers all around her neck. The feathers quickly grew all over her body, except for her face, which remained human. She grew larger and taller, until she was towering over Dave and Karkat, at least eight feet tall. More feathers sprouted from her arms, and her arms had fully transformed into enormous feathered bird-wings. Within less than a minute, she’d turned from a normal human into some kind of otherworldly monstrosity.

Dave was completely frozen. He tried to think of something, _anything_ to help rationalize what he was seeing. Maybe someone had slipped him some kind of hallucinogen, or maybe this whole day was just a really bad dream. But, he didn’t have the time to rationalize. The horrifying monster, former hall-monitor, spoke.

“Well, young demigods?!” it screeched, its voice booming throughout the hall. “Are you going to fight, or will you be harpy food?!”

The monster lunged, claws and wings outstretched. Dave’s life flashed before his eyes.

But from behind Dave, he heard a familiar voice shouting out to him. “Guys, _duck!”_ the voice screamed.

Instead of ducking, Dave whipped his head around to see who was yelling at him, still in shock from everything he was seeing. Karkat seemed to have the same idea, and looked behind them as well.

As the both of them turned around, who did they see behind them but _Jade,_ sprinting towards both of them at full speed, without her straw hat and carrying something.

Once Jade reached the two boys, she leapt forward and tackled both of them to the ground- astoundingly, it was just in time. Just as Dave and Karkat fell to the floor, one of the monster’s powerful wings sailed over their heads, missing them by a hair; it was a blow strong enough to send them flying if it had hit them. The monster raised one of her taloned bird-feet, and prepared to swing it down onto the prone pile of kids on the floor.

Jade managed to wriggle upright, and Dave realized what it was that she’d been holding- a hunting rifle. She pointed the rifle up at the bird-foot slashing down at her, and she pulled the trigger just in time.

The monster shrieked in pain as the bullet lodged into its foot.

Jade shuddered as she was splattered with the monster’s blood, but she quickly recovered. The monster continued to scream and cry in pain. It looked like the bullet hadn’t deterred it from trying to attack the kids- it had only made it angry. Dave was trembling. Even if he knew what the hell was going on, he didn’t have his sword. He couldn’t fight.

“Hey, ugly! Over here!”

Dave turned to see the source of a voice from behind them, and as did the monster.

It was Terezi, standing side by side with Tavros. Terezi was holding up her probing cane, which split in half, unsheathing two dual swords. Tavros held something in his hand, but Dave couldn’t tell what it was before it transformed in the blink of an eye, into a bronze-colored lance that was taller than he was. Dave blinked rapidly, sure that his eyes must be playing tricks on him.

The monster charged, but so did Terezi and Tavros. The monster was limping and staggering from the bullet in its foot, but still, it got ready to attack. Terezi skidded under the raised wing of the monster and slashed right where its ribs would be. Screeching in agony, the monster swung its wing down, knocking Terezi backwards and almost making her fall over, but she quickly recovered. Dave was terrified for her as well as impressed- she was blind, how was she so good at fighting. Hell, why was her cane a sword, and why was she fighting some kind of terrifying monster in the middle of the high school hallway? Dave had no answers, and he watched as Tavros blocked a slash from the monster's claws with his lance.

Only seconds after the monster began fighting her friends, Jade leapt to her feet, starting towards the monster and where her friends were fighting. She notched her rifle right in the crook of her neck, and stared down the barrel with a calculating glare. But on the other side of the monster, Tavros paused as she approached, and he cast a concerned glance at Dave and Karkat on the floor.

“Jade, you should take those two to the bathroom behind you- hide and explain!,” Tavros shouted at Jade from across the way. “They’ll be safer out of the way of the fight!”

Jade cocked her rifle, already preparing to shoot at the monster. But, Dave doubted she could get a clear shot with how much the monster was jerking around. Worse, she might even hit Terezi who was dangerously near her line of fire. Jade wasn’t discouraged, and shouted back at Tavros. “Hey, I can fight! This is my quest!”

“Which is why it would _really_ suck if you died!” Tavros yelled, clearly becoming frustrated. He jumped out of the way of the monster’s wing careening towards him, barely dodging it.

“But I can help!” Jade insisted, refusing to lower her rifle.

Tavros stabbed the monster’s shoulder, right at the base of the wing. While the monster was distracted by the lance in its shoulder, Tavros gestured wildly to Dave and Karkat who were still frozen in terror on the floor. “So help _them!”_ he shouted

“Jade, listen!” Terezi cut in, she swept her leg under one of the monster's legs, causing it to stumble as she sliced across its side. “It’s _your_ quest, _you_ should be the one to explain!”

Jade still looked stubborn, but she shouted in exasperation and seemed to give in. 

She turned around and dashed back towards where Dave and Karkat were sitting, slinging her rifle around her shoulder by the strap. Before Dave could process what she was doing, she’d grabbed both him and Karkat by their shoulders. She pulled them to their feet with strength that seemed abnormal for someone Jade’s size. Dave stumbled, his eyes still fixed on the monster and Tavros and Terezi fighting it. Since he wasn’t following her yet, Jade grabbed him from under the armpits and started dragging him backwards, into the girls bathroom behind them.

Karkat kicked the doorstep of the bathroom door once they were all inside, and the door shut behind the three kids.

Jade let go of Dave, and he nearly fell over. He looked around, confused and panicked, wondering what the hell had just happened. Karkat seemed just as appalled as he was, but Jade seemed abnormally calm.

“Will someone explain what the fuck is going on?!” Karkat exclaimed to no one in particular.

Dave shuddered as he heard more noises of fighting from outside the door. “What _is_ that thing?! Why is it attacking us?! Why that fuck do you people have weapons in a school?!”

“I’ll explain everything, just chill out for a second!” Jade threw her hands up, gesturing for both Dave and Karkat to be quiet. “That thing out there is a harpy- we knew that there would probably be a monster in the school, we just didn’t know what kind, and we had to find you before _it_ found _you._ Of course it would be here, it smelled you and it was obvious. I mean, just one half-blood attracts enough monsters, but _two…_ that’s just a death trap!”

“What the fuck is a half-blood?!” Karkat was yelling even louder, and from the way his whole body was tense and shaking, Dave figured that he was on his way to throwing an infamous Karkat-grade temper tantrum. “You haven’t explained _anything_ yet!!!”

Jade huffed and crossed her arms. “Well if you’d shut up and let me talk- oh, for goodness sake. A half-blood is a demigod! Half human, half god! You two are demigods!”

Dave just stared at her, unable to think of what to say.

Until finally, he made up his mind. He turned on his heel and stared walking back towards the backroom door. “Alright, I’m out.”

“Wait!” Jade’s voice was full of panic, and threw out her hand in a _‘stop’_ motion, just as Dave was reaching for the door handle. “You’ll die if you go out there, you need to come with us! You heard me, come on. The Greek gods are real-”

“Look, I’ve had a weird fucking day,” Dave interrupted, trying not to sound too frustrated. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, and you sure as hell don’t know anything about me. I don’t know you guys drugged us, or if this is some kind of cult or trafficking scheme, or if you’re actually fucking delusional, or maybe you just have a sick sense of humor and was to fuck with us. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. I’m leaving.”

Karkat gritted his teeth. “I have to side with Dave on this one. You’re clearly off your fucking rocker, but I’m not gullible enough to fall with this. A big monster in the hallway is one thing, because I saw it with my own fucking eyes. But the Greek gods? Demigods?”

Jade’s eyes darted back and forth, looking desperate. “No, you _have_ to listen to me. Both of you probably have a history of getting in trouble, because unexplained things have happened to you since you were a baby. You’ve probably been able to see things that no one else can see, and if something weird happens to you, even when a lot of people are watching, no one seems to remember what actually happened. That’s the Mist working- it keeps the mortals from seeing things they can’t comprehend. You two were probably diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD. The dyslexia is because your brains are hard-wired to reach ancient greek, and ADHD is your battle reflex. You probably don’t have a normal, nuclear family. You don’t know who one or both of your parents are, and you hardly know anything about them. That’s because your parent is a god! Please, you have to believe me.”

Dave looked over at Karkat, who looked back with a matching expression of complete incredulity.

“How did-” Karkat looked too stunned to speak. “I’ve never told anyone that I’m dyslexic, or about my mom, or all that weird shit I’ve seen. How the fuck do you know all that?!”

“Because I felt how you’re feeling now!” Jade exclaimed, looking sorrowful. “I was there once. Last August, _I_ found out that I was a demigod. I found out about my real mom, and I couldn’t believe it either. I wanted to find some kind of explanation, but this _is_ the explanation.”

Dave’s eyes trailed down towards the ground. “So… why are you here?”

Jade’s face softened, relieved that she’d made some kind of progress. “To rescue you. Demigods have a certain scent that attracts monsters, wanting to challenge them to test or skill, or just to eat them. There’s not a lot of demigods out there, having two in one school, or even one city will attract hordes of monsters. But there is a safe place for demigods- Camp Half-Blood. It saves demigods around the globe and brings them in to train them and keep them safe. And it sends out demigods who are ready on quests to do great things. They sent _me_ on a quest- a quest to find you two, and bring you back to camp.”

“Wait, so you’re asking us to come back to this crazy summer camp with you?” Dave stuffed his hands into his pockets. “And you just want us to take your word for it?”

From outside the bathroom, in the hallway, there was the muffled sound of a high pitched scream followed by a loud metallic _clang._ Everyone glanced at it for a moment, confused, before continuing on with the conversation.

“Oh, um,” Jade’s shoulders sank. “Yeah, I guess that is what I’m asking.”

Karkat scowled. “Jesus fucking Christ, you really are out of your mind. Do you honestly think that we’re just gonna drop our entire lives- our families, our homes, just to come follow you to some made-up fantasy world?”

Dave pushed his sunglasses further up his nose, and stared down at his shoes. He thought very hard about his options. Part of him still thought that Jade was lying, but that didn’t explain how she knew things about him that he’d never told anyone. It didn’t explain the weapons, and it definitely didn’t explain the monster in the hallway. What she was saying about gods and monsters… it made sense. Well, no, it didn’t make any fucking sense, but it checked out. It explained questions that Dave didn’t even know he wanted answers to, and it sure made his life more interesting. He couldn't figure out if it was really worth believing.

So, Dave weighed his options. He could stay, and his life would go back to normal. There would be no more monsters, and no more mysterious guest students. Summer would start. He would spend all day training with Bro. The days would start to blend together from pain and exhaustion and soon enough, he’d forget this whole thing ever happened.

Or he could leave. He could disappear without a trace. It was only a week before summer, so no one would notice if he disappeared- they would just assume he was gone on an early vacation. Bro already spent enough time avoiding the cops and CPS, so he wouldn’t get reported missing. And Bro… he wouldn’t care. He’d spend days waiting for Dave to come back, thinking that it was just like any of the other times Dave had tried to run away, only to return a day or two later. But when Dave didn’t come back, Bro wouldn’t care- it just meant one less problem in his life.

No more early-morning swordfights. No more walking into school with excuses for why he was covered in blood and bruises. No more hiding food around the apartment just to feed himself. No more creepy puppets. No more Bro.

When the cards were down, Dave didn’t care if Jade was lying. He just wanted out.

“I’m in,” Dave stated blankly, looking up at Jade.

Her face lit up. “Wait, really?! Oh thank goodness, I knew you’d come around. You’re going to love camp, you’ll make so many friends! Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone, and to find out who your godly parent is!”

“Wait a fucking second, you can’t be serious,” Karkat gaped at Dave, staring at him like he’d grown a third arm.

Dave didn’t reply to Karkat, and kept his eyes fixed on Jade. “Where’s this magic summer camp.”

“Long Island, New York,” Jade replied.

Both Karkat and Dave were stunned. “What?!” Dave exclaimed. “That’s so far! We’re taking a plane, right? God, I’ve never been on an airplane, I don’t even have a passport! Do I even need a passport?! How the hell are we supposed to get through security like this?!”

“That’s the thing,” Jade fiddled with the strap that was keeping his rifle around his shoulders. “We can’t take a plane. Zeus would be offended if we were in his domain, and he’d blast us out of the sky with lightning. We have to travel on foot- it took me and Tavros and Terezi a week just to get here, and trust me, there were bumps in the road. But don’t worry, I have it all planned out how we’ll get there- it’ll take four days tops.”

“Great,” Dave sighed in relief. “That’s fine. Well then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

Karkat was still staring at him in shock, but Dave ignored it.

Jade pulled the bathroom door open just a crack, peered outside, and opened the door all the way.

The harpy was prone on the floor, with Tavros standing on its back with the lance pierced through its back to keep it down. Terezi stood at its head, with her foot on its beak to keep the head down. Terezi swung her sword up, and brought it down powerfully, cleanly slicing off the monster’s head. With a last scream of indignation, the harpy turned into an ashy kind of dust, and disintegrated into nothingness, and Tavros stumbled backwards as it collapsed beneath his feet. It left behind Tavros and Terezi standing around the space that the monster’s corpse used to be. Both of them were disheveled and splattered with blood, still holding their weapons in their hands.

“Awesome job, guys!” Jade smiled brightly like this wasn’t even the slightest bit strange. “While you helped out with that ol’ thing, I explained what I could to Dave and Karkat.”

Tavros hoisted his lance over his head and rested it on his shoulder, breathing heavily. “That’s great! Are they coming back to camp with us or not?”

“Dave said he would!” Jade played with her hair sheepishly. “But Karkat said that he’s not coming. Sorry, I don’t think we can sway him. I think…” her eyes filled with sorrow. “I think I won’t be able to complete the whole quest. We managed to save one half-blood, but there’s nothing we can do. We just have to take what we can get, I guess.”

“I got blood on my best Crocs for _this?!’_ Terezi sighed in disappointment as he sheathed her swords, making them one full cane again.

Jade was attempting to be positive, but was clearly struggling. “Hey it’s ok, we got one. Besides, we’re not leaving just yet. We have to drop by Dave’s house so he can pack some of his stuff. Karkat might change his mind by then.

Terezi looked hopeful, and Dave looked over at Karkat to see his reaction. Karkat was tempted- it really looked like he was. But, he shook his head. “I’m not changing my mind.”

“We’ll see,” Terezi snickered. “That’s what I said too.”

“Uh, not to interrupt or anything, I really think we should get going,” Tavros cut in, breaking the tension.

Dave glanced from the blood on the others’ clothes, to their weapons, to the pile of monster dust on the floor. “Aren’t we going to be a bit suspicious walking out of here. I mean, leaving school in the middle of the day is suspicious on it’s own, but leaving school in the middle of the day while covered in blood and holding weapons sounds like an even worse idea.”

“Yeah,” Tavros agreed. “That's why we should get going. The Mist does what the Mist does best, but there’s going to be mortals who see something weird if we don’t leave now. And there's still so much you don't know- we have a lot to explain.”

Tavros, Jade, and Terezi walked closer to each other, seemingly getting ready to walk right out of the school. Dave stepped forward to follow them. He doubted that they had a plan, and he still wasn’t totally sure what was going on. But whatever, they’d explain on the way. Besides, Dave was finally getting out of the hellhole he lived in. He had friends who were saving him from it. Friends who _cared_ about him.

“If you’re not coming with us, you can just stay here,” Terezi called back to Karkat. “Go to your next class. I’m sure you’d get in trouble for being absent, after all.”

Karkat rolled his eyes as Terezi’s teasing, but begrudgingly began to walk with the rest of the group. “Fine, I’ll go with you, but I’m _only_ going to my house to go home for the day. My dad will understand, today’s been fucking weird. I’m still not coming with you guys- this demigod stuff is total bullshit.”

Terezi poked Dave in the ribs to get his attention, and she spoke in a soft voice. “That’s what they all say,” she winked.

Dave wasn’t sure if he believed her.


	4. The demigods make a very bad plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, two updates in a month! Technically. Two October updates, that is. They're still pretty far apart, lol. But yes, here's this fun chapter!! I really joined writing it, and I hope you guys enjoy it too!!!!!

It was easier to be inconspicuous than Karkat had thought it would be. Like any sane person, he was under the impression that a group of five oddly dressed, blood-splattered teenagers walking out of a high school at ten in the morning would draw a lot of attention. Apparently, he was wrong.

For as long as they stood out in the middle of the hallway, out in the open, nobody seemed to come across the group. Nobody came out of the classrooms. Jade retrieved a cluster of backpacks that belonged to her trio, which seemed to be packed to the brim with stuff. Meanwhile, Karkat and Dave left to retrieve their belongings from their lockers.

Jade, Tavros, and Terezi at least had the decency to put away their weapons, but that only made Karkat more weirded out. Obviously, Terezi’s swords reattached back into her cane, as she’d done as soon as the fight was over. But for Jade and Tavros, their weapons were apparently collapsible. Jade had to fiddle with her rifle a lot to get it to collapse smaller, after which she put it into her backpack where a water bottle was supposed to go. While this feature seemed more mechanical, or at the very least _sensical,_ Tavros’s was quite the opposite. In the blink of an eye, his lance seemed to morph into a bulky bracelet beaded with bronze stones, which fit awkwardly against his spiked fingerless gloves.

“How-?” Karkat started to say this happened, though he couldn’t find the words.

“Oh, uh, it’s celestial bronze,” Tavros said matter-of-factly. “Metal of the gods. My lance has some magic in it so that it’s more portable. A lot of weapons at Camp Half-Blood are like that, actually.”

Karkat’s eyes widened a little bit, curious. It was no surprise that with all the scary monsters, these kids would have to carry around weapons, but it still sounded really cool. Karkat wondered what kind of weapon he might have, if he’d chosen to go with them. _Which I’m not,_ he reminded himself. _I’m not going with them._

Karkat and Dave followed behind the questing trio, who were marching through the school like they owned the place. Karkat didn’t understand, weren’t they concerned about being spotted? And yet, nobody came out of the classrooms. Despite how loudly the trio was discussing their plans, and how carelessly they were walking about the halls, they were never caught. Karkat didn’t understand it. What kind of dumb luck did they have? This confusion grew when they reached the front doors of the school. They had to walk through the main office to leave through the doors, and Karkat was convinced that _surely_ they’d be caught- the secretary was sitting right at the front desk! There was no way she wouldn’t see the five teenagers walking out of the building in the middle of the school day like it was nobody’s business. That was about as suspicious as it could get!

Yet she didn’t look up from her desk, and the group walked past without issue.

By the time they were out of the building, Karkat’s confusion had reached a breaking point. “Why the hell didn’t anybody see us?!” he exclaimed. “We weren’t being subtle as all!”

“It’s called the Mist,” Terezi started to explain. Jade had handed her one of the trio’s backpacks, and she hoisted it onto her shoulders. Karkat guessed that it was pretty heavy. “It’s what keeps mortals from seeing into our world. It stops them from seeing monsters, and makes up logical explanations when they see things they can’t explain. Some demigods can learn to manipulate the Mist- I’m super good at it! But for you, all you need to do is look like you have somewhere to be and they won’t question you at all! Pretty cool, huh?”

Karkat briefly recalled a parent-teacher conference in second grade. His second-grade teacher had told his father to get Karkat’s eyes checked, since Karkat was claiming that the vice principal had only one eye! _Was that the mist?_ Karkat wondered. Had every weird thing he’d seen been _actually real,_ rather than a product of a hyperactive imagination?

“By the way,” Dave cut in. “My apartment is pretty close to the school, so we should stop there first.”

“That’s a relief!” Jade smiled. “Well everyone, I’ve got the next step of the plan!”

‘Plan’ seemed like an overstatement.

Before they left, Dave took his skateboard from the bike rack, and attempted to stow it in his backpack, since he was planning to walk instead of skate. And with that, the crew was on their way.

The walk to Dave’s apartment didn’t take too long, and Karkat was relieved by it. He was having a rough day. He considered going straight back to his house right away, but there were no available buses, so walking through Houston all alone wasn't the safest thing to do. Walking back to his house with four other teenagers, three of which he knew could defend themselves, seemed much safer. They arrived at a busy block, and a tall apartment complex on the corner. It didn’t exactly look like a luxury building, but Karkat wasn’t one to judge. There were a lot of kids at his school that didn’t come from very fortunate situations, and being an asshole to Dave over living in a poorer area would just be a dick move, no matter how much of a prick he was.

“Is any of your family, like your parents, home?” Jade asked, with the whole group standing on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building. “Y’know, so you can explain to them.”

Dave looked surprised. “Oh, um, I live with my brother, not my parents. And yeah no, I don’t think he’s home. Yeah, he’s always gone by now, so he’s definitely not there. Thank fuck, am I right? Y’all don’t need to worry, I’m just grabbing my stuff and leaving.”

Terezi tilted her head, concerned. “We can go up with you, if you want.”

“No, no, no, that’s fine. My Bro’s not home, but I still don’t think he’d like strangers in our apartment. Just wait here, I’ll be back in a few.” Dave informed the group. “I’m just grabbing my stuff. Clothes, snacks, swords, you know the deal. It’s nothing that Bro’s gonna miss- except maybe some money from his stash.” he added with a snort of laughter. “I figure we’ll need money if we’re heading all the way to New York. Anyway, don’t worry about me.”

Jade seemed surprised. “Oh… you don’t want time to leave a note or…?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Honestly, I’d prefer to spend as little time in that place as possible.” Dave shook his head. “Like I said, Bro’s not losing anything that he’s gonna miss.”

Karkat didn’t like the implications of that.

Dave gave the group a thumbs up as the complex’s door closed behind him, and he made his way into the building.

Suddenly, Karkat recalled some memories of a few days, scattered throughout the school year. Normally, as Dave and Karkat would sit together at the beginning of Algebra, Dave would make some effort to bother Karkat, or strike up a conversation with him. Except… for a few days. Those days, Dave would walk into the classroom limping, clutching at his ribs or arms like he was in pain. His head was hung low, and he was eerily quiet. Sometimes he’d have cuts on his elbows and knees. A few times, Karkat had asked him if he was ok, or if he needed to go to the nurse’s office. Sometimes, Dave would make a weak joke about falling down the stairs, and that he was completely fine- just a little shaken. Other times, Dave wouldn’t respond at all. He wouldn’t talk to Karkat all class.

Karkat thought he would’ve preferred Dave to shut up, yet he’d always hated those days.

It wasn’t long before Dave came rushing back out of the apartment. He had his backpack slung around his shoulders, which looked significantly more packed with stuff. Karkat also noticed something that looked like… a sword handle sticking out of his backpack?

“I’m back~!” Dave called as he came marching out of the building. “I’ve got everything I need. And that includes…” He reached behind him, before his hand latched onto the handle sticking out of his backpack, and he pulled it out to reveal a very real looking katana. “This bad boy!” Dave held it out in his hand dramatically. “That’s right, I studied the blade. I learned from the best. Pretty fucking cool, huh?”

Karkat huffed. “Am I the only one here who can’t fight?! For fuck’s sake.”

Terezi snickered. “Fitting, considering you’re so set on not coming with us.”

“Terezi, don’t be like that,” Tavros looked over at his friend disapprovingly. “It’s his decision to make, not ours.” He turned back to Karkat with a gentler expression. “Don’t worry about it- you’ll be fine either way. But… if you do choose to come back with us, you’ll get to learn how to fight! I’m pretty sure Dave here is an outlier- most half-bloods don’t know how to fight when they first come to camp.”

Karkat almost found that comforting and endearing, until he heard Dave yell “Hell yeah! I’m an extra cool demigod!” and once again, he was annoyed.

Next stop was Karkat’s house, where they would be dropping him off, and being on their way.

Karkat’s house was in the more suburban parts of Houston rather than the downtown city area- a decent neighborhood, since his dad was a college professor at the nearby university. After some time spent wandering around the neighborhood, they eventually reached Karkat’s house. It was a grey two-story house with an unkempt lawn. It was a house that didn’t seem to stand out in any way, and the group certainly would’ve walked right past if Karkat hadn’t pointed it out to them and told them that it was his house.

Karkat stood in front of it, and fumbled for his house-key, which was on a string around his neck and tucked into his shirt. He turned to Dave and the questing trio, not knowing how to feel.

“Well, I guess this is where we part ways…” Jade said sorrowfully. “It was nice meeting you, even if you’re not coming back with us. Even if…” she only looked sadder. “Even if I don’t get to complete my quest, I’m glad I had the opportunity. And I hope that wherever life happens to take you, even if it’s not back to Camp Half-Blood with us, you’ll be happy.”

Karkat didn’t think she was trying to guilt-trip him, but he still felt guilty. “Um, thanks.”

“What she said,” Dave said in agreement with Jade. “Dude, you were the closest thing I had to a friend all year. Good luck out there.”

“You too,” Karkat nodded. He didn’t know what else to say.

He turned away, knowing he couldn’t look at them without feeling awful about it. Without any other ado, he walked towards the front door of his house. He turned his key in the faulty lock of the door and jiggled it to try and prompt it into unlocking. As it was unlocked, he opened the door hesitantly. He didn’t turn around to look at the others as he stepped inside.

And he shut the door behind him.

Karkat stood there in the foyer of his house for what felt like hours, even though it could’ve only been seconds. He mulled over his conflicted feelings.

His curiosity was really getting the better of him. He really did want to go back to Camp Half-Blood with the others, even if it was only to find out what it really was. There was so much he didn’t know, and so much he had an opportunity to do that he never thought he would. He could learn how to swordfight, or use cool godly powers, and make friends with other awesome demigods who would understand and like him, just like the trio he’d met at school had done. And yet, as much as he _wanted_ the fantasy adventure so badly, it just sounded so outlandish. Surely something so great couldn’t be true- surely he couldn’t be so lucky. So, what would happen if he stayed? He’d go back to having no friends, with nothing to do all summer. Well, maybe not nothing, since his dad might still be planning on sending him to that summer camp.

He froze.

_Summer camp._

His dad had been planning to send him to summer camp- one that Karkat’s _mother_ had recommended.

Karkat’s jaw dropped as everything began to click. A summer camp… one like _Camp Half-Blood._ That his mother recommended- if Karkat’s mother was a goddess then surely she would be the one to tell his father to send Karkat to the camp for demigods, the children of the gods just like the kids he’d seen today. His dad had known the whole time- by sending him to Camp Half-Blood this summer, he’d finally tell Karkat the truth. It all made sense!

Karkat was feeling a million emotions, but he knew the first thing he had to do.

He turned right around, and sprinted back to the front door at top speeds. With shaking, desperate hands, he threw the door open in a panic. He jumped down from his porch and onto the driveway, throwing out his hand in a _‘stop’_ gesture.

“WAIT!” he shouted frantically.

But the others were still there! They were only just beginning to walk away from Karkat’s house, like they’d been waiting for him to back out. And they all froze in their tracks as they heard Karkat shout, turning around as fast as they could. _They waited for me!_ A small, excited part of Karkat’s mind shouted.

Jade’s eyes went wide with sudden hope. “Did you change your mind?! Are you coming with us?!”

The ghost of a smile appeared on Karkat’s face. “Just give me some time to write a note and pack my stuff. I’m coming with you, but don’t act too smug. I just realized that you guys might be telling the truth, because I’m pretty sure my dad was planning to send me to Camp Half-Blood the whole time! What the fuck, right? Besides, I still have my phone- I can just text my dad if I need him to come and get me if this whole fucking thing is a sham.”

Terezi pumped her fist into the air. “Ha, yes! I knew you’d come around!

“Don’t take too long, we’re on a tight schedule.” Jade chirped, her face still lit up with joy when she heard Karkat was coming with them.

Karkat doubted that. While Jade seemed to act very sure of herself, he got the feeling that she didn’t really know what she was doing. But, she’d supposedly known that she was demigod for almost a year, so she knew more than Karkat did. At least Karkat remembered the names of all the gods from his intense mythology phase back in fifth grade- it was great that it had finally turned out to be useful. “I’ll be right back,” He told the group, getting ready to turn back to go inside. “Do _not_ go anywhere.”

And with that he ran back into his house.

Karkat only had his backpack to carry all his stuff in, so he only packed the essentials. Clothes, all the money and spare change he could find, some non-perishable snacks, a water bottle, toiletries, and multiple phone chargers. Luckily, he wouldn’t need any of his school stuff, so he neglected to pack his shitty, school issued laptop. Karkat also packed less essential things, like black nail polish, earbuds, and some of his favorite romance novels (his father wished that Karkat would stop reading such dreadful literature, but Karkat’s tastes couldn’t be swayed). But it wasn’t long before he was packed up, and he moved on to writing his dad a note. He tore a piece of notebook paper out of his journal and began to write.

_‘HEY DAD. I’M SORRY ABOUT THE FIGHT WE HAD LAST NIGHT, I WAS BEING STUPID. BUT THAT'S NOT WHY I’M WRITING THIS. TODAY WAS THE WEIRDEST DAY OF MY LIFE, I WISH I COULD TELL YOU MORE ABOUT IT, BUT I HAVE TO GO SOON, SO I’LL KEEP IT SHORT._

_TODAY IN SCHOOL I GOT A LATE SLIP FROM A HALL MONITOR WHO TURNED OUT TO BE A SCARY BIRD MONSTER WHO TRIED TO KILL ME. DAVE WAS THERE TOO. AND REMEMBER THOSE KIDS I WAS TELLING YOU ABOUT WHO I WAS STARTING TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH? THEY SAVED US WITH CRAZY FIGHTING AND KILLED THE MONSTER. THEY EXPLAINED A LOT TO ME, AND I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT TO THINK. THEY TOLD ME THAT THEY WERE DEMIGODS: CHILDREN OF THE OLD GREEK GODS. AND THEY TOLD ME THAT I WAS A DEMIGOD TOO. I KNOW IT SOUNDS CRAZY, BUT I THINK THEY’RE RIGHT. I AM A DEMIGOD._

_AND I THINK YOU’VE KNOWN IT TOO, FOR A VERY LONG TIME._

_THEY’RE TAKING ME TO THAT SPECIAL SUMMER CAMP YOU WERE TELLING ME ABOUT. THE ONE THAT MOM TOLD YOU TO SEND ME TOO. I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN, BUT I’LL BE SAFE THERE. IF THIS IS ACTUALLY_ ~~_BULLSHIT_~~ _A HOAX AND I’VE BEEN TRICKED, AND I’M NOT A DEMIGOD, TEXT ME AND LET ME KNOW. BUT I’M LEAVING NOW._

 _YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT MY MOM. IT’S PROBABLY HARD FOR YOU TOO, GETTING A CHILD DUMPED ON YOU FROM A_ _~~FUCKING~~ _ _GREEK GODDESS. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, I’LL CALL YOU LATER._

_\- KARKAT’_

After scribbling out all the swear words he’d accidently put in, Karkat left the note on the kitchen table where his dad was sure to see it.

Karkat then put on his backpack, and walked back to his front door. The questing trio and Dave were still standing outside in his driveway idly. Dave was sitting on the ground, looking bored, and the trio was just wandering around the place. But, as they heard the front door open, their heads whipped up to see Karkat walking out the door with a backpack that was stuffed to the brim. Terezi grinned.

“Look who’s back!” Terezi stretched out her arms dramatically, as Karkat skipped down the stairs of his porch. “I’m glad you didn’t ditch us! I thought you might disappear in that house.”

Karkat really hoped he wasn’t blushing. “You can’t get rid of me that fucking easily.”

“Alright, I’m _loving_ the heartfelt reunion, and I can’t express how happy I am that Karkat’s coming with us,” Jade cut in. “But we really need to get going. We have so much to do, so much to explain, and so little time! So let’s _go,_ already!”

“Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!” Karkat snapped at her.

Karkat walked to where the rest of the group stood on the driveway. Dave stood up from his sitting position on the ground, and Jade was quick to jog down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. Karkat only hoped that Jade had some semblance of a plan, or knew where they were going.

⁂

Karkat was pretty sure that Jade had no idea where they were going.

They’d been walking for a while- out of the suburbs and back into the downtown area of the city. The streets were surprisingly vacant, so the half-bloods didn’t have to worry about people eavesdropping on their conversations. Karkat was growing annoyed and worried, and he was wondering if his decision to come with the others was a good idea. Maybe he should’ve waited until summer, and his dad would’ve taken him to Camp Half-Blood all the same.

“So, if we’re going all the way to New York, and we’re not taking a plane, how are we getting there?” Dave was the first between him and Karkat to ask the big question. _What was Jade’s plan? How would they be getting back to Camp Half-Blood?_

Jade bit her lip. “Um, good question! Don’t worry, I have a perfect plan! We’re planning to hop from vehicle to vehicle, probably buses or taxis or other public transit, at much as it takes to get to Atlanta, Georgia. I know… the general location of the buses we’re using? Um… it’s a work in progress. But then, once we reach Atlanta, we’re stopping at the Atlanta Peachtree train station, and taking the train the rest of the way to New York. Then we’ll just take a taxi to Montauk, and Camp Half-Blood is right there! It’s simple, really. The only problem is that I’m not sure if we’ll have enough money for train tickets- they’re really expensive. Oh, and timing! The train ride is seventeen hours, but I have no idea how long the whole bus-hopping part will take.”

Karkat huffed in exasperation. “Great, _just_ great!” he cried sarcastically. “So what are we doing _now?”_

“Oh, we talked about it while you were packing up your stuff in your house,” Terezi explained. “We’re going to the convenience store to grab some extra stuff for the trip, since we have an hour to kill before our first bus gets here. The store is super close to the bus stop, too!”

Karkat supposed that wasn’t the worst idea. “Ok, fair enough.”

“I can’t wait to get back to camp,” Tavros commented, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “I think that it’ll be pretty cool to introduce the baby demis to everyone.”

“Who are you calling baby?” Dave said jokingly, nudging Tavros in the shoulder.

Tavros didn’t seem to get the joke. “Uhh, I’m not? It’s just the term we use for half-bloods who recently found out that they were, y’know, half-bloods. Since you guys are kinda the newest people there and don’t really know how everything works, so we call you baby baby demigods, or baby demis. Actually, Jade was the camp baby until Eridan arrived, and you guys will be the new camp babies once you get there.” his voice trailed off like he was realizing something. “Jesus Christ, Eridan is gonna be so annoying now that he’s not the camp baby anymore.”

Both Jade and Terezi groaned dejectedly, probably out of mutual distaste for this Eridan guy.

“Wait, sorry, I have two more questions,” Dave was falling behind the group as they were walking down the vacant sidewalk, and jogged to catch up. “Number one- I know Jade mentioned that she came to camp last August, but how about the rest of you guys? Like, how old are you and how long have you known about being a demigod? Number two, I’ve been wondering about this one for a while. Which gods are your guys' mom or dad?”

Karkat was relieved that Dave had asked this, since he’d been wondering this as well. He was curious to see who the trio’s godly parents were, since they had yet to mention it.

“Well, I’m fifteen, I turned fifteen in December!” Jade was the first to reply.

Dave raised his fist towards Jade for a fist-bump. “Oh, no way! I turned fifteen in December too! A fellow December birthday.”

Jade giggled and returned Dave’s fist-bump (she couldn’t just leave him hanging). “Nice. Oh, and my mom is Demeter- goddess of the harvest. So like, plants and stuff. It’s great! But that might just be because I love plants.” she curled her finger around a strand of her hair.

“I’m the same age as Jade,” Terezi continued. “But I’m the daughter of Nemesis- goddess of revenge and divine justice! Never cross me, because I don’t forget a grudge easily!” She cackled, and Karkat got the feeling that she’d been planning on saying that for a while. Rehearsed it, even.

Demeter being Jade's mom made total sense, considering that Jade had come to school looking like a cottagecore southern gardener on the first day that Karkat had seen her. Karkat remembered Demeter from his Greek mythology phase in fifth grade, but he couldn’t remember Nemesis as well. She must’ve been one of the minor gods. Terezi’s mom being Nemesis was more surprising. Goddess of revenge and justice? Karkat would’ve expected a god of ugly tourist clothes and bright colors.

Terezi continued “And I’ve been at camp for three years. But, Tavros is the oldest, and he’s been at camp for the longest. He’s sixteen, but has been at camp for eight years!”

“That long?” Karkat raised her eyebrows. “So he found out when he was eight?”

Tavros nodded in confirmation. “Yeah, it was a long time ago. Camp Half-Blood pretty is pretty much my home. Oh, right- and my dad is Hermes, the messenger god.”

Karkat definitely remembered Hermes. He was so relieved that he already knew some of this stuff. He wondered if Dave had been similarly interested in Greek mythology when he was younger, or if he was relying entirely on whatever he learned about Greek gods in second grade. Who knows, maybe Dave knew even less and he _really_ had no idea what was going on. Karkat was a little bitter to find out that he really was the youngest in the group- he was still fourteen, but he was turning fifteen this summer. Because he had a summer birthday, he was always the youngest in his grade, and now he was the youngest in the demigod group. But, as he heard about the questing trio’s godly parents, it brought another question to Karkat’s mind.

“And… who are me and Dave’s godly parents?” Karkat asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Dave nodded excitedly in agreement. “I’ve been wondering that, too.”

Jade pursed her lips. “We don't exactly know. I mean, this is part of the whole process of saving new half-bloods and bringing them back to camp. We don’t know who you are, and who your godly parents could be! But once you come back to camp, your parents can claim you.”

Karkat frowned. He’d have to wait until he got back to the camp before he found out who his mom was. Oh well. He’d lived fourteen years without knowing- he could go another couple days. 

Once they reached the convenience store, they had about thirty minutes before the bus would arrive. Luckily, since the stop was right outside the store, they could take their time buying stuff inside. Karkat was grateful, since they’d left before lunch was served at school and he knew he was going to be hungry. He could at least get some snacks for the road before they left.

They pooled together all their money in the store, to see how much they had to spend, and how much they needed to save for bus fare for the rest of their trip. The questing trio was disappointingly broke, but luckily Karkat had taken all of his own money from the jar of cash that sat on top of his dresser, and Dave had raided his brother’s stash of extra money. With all of the money pooled together, it made for $186.39. Not bad! Jade told the group they had $50 of spending money to get as many snacks as they wanted, but the rest was reserved to pay for their transportation. Jade also told them to get snacks that were filling and didn’t expire quickly, like beef jerky, trail mix, and other packaged snacks. With five people and $50 to spend, each person got around $10 each for their own snacks.

Karkat had already grabbed some snacks from home, so he didn’t really know what to get. So instead he got some candy, and a few bags of chips. There weren’t many other customers in the store- there were maybe two aside from Karkat and the other half-bloods. They’d paid for the bulk of their snacks they’d picked out, and were now wandering around the store, looking for anything else. As Karkat wandered aimlessly around the store, he came to the freezer in the back, where the store kept all its cold drinks. 

Tavros was also there, kneeling by the freezer, looking at the 20oz soda bottles on the bottom shelf. Karkat walked up to him, and Tavros gave him a curt glance, like he didn’t really want Karkat to be there. Tavros took out two bottles of soda from the freezer, and immediately put them into his backpack.

“I’m pretty sure we can’t pay for that.” Karkat narrowed his eyes. “Unless you want to go over budget and waste ten dollars on soda, which I’m pretty sure Jade would flip her shit over.”

Tavros shot him a pointed glare. “I know.”

The two boys stared at each other awkwardly, before Karkat finally realized.

“Oh, are you…?” Karkat lowered his voice as much as he could, which was difficult given how loud he usually was. “Are you stealing?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tavros muttered under his breath, before turning back to Karkat with a frustrated expression. “Uh, what does it look like I’m doing? Yes, I’m stealing, and you better not tell Jade.” he whispered through gritted teeth, rather aggressively.

“Okay, okay, I won’t,” Karkat nodded in understanding, crouching down next to Tavros on the floor so that they were at least on the same eye level while talking. “I wasn’t planning on it anyway. But like… why soda? It won’t be refrigerated in your backpack, and it’ll just get shaken up. _And_ if you try to drink it at any point, the other will notice and wonder where you got it.”

“It’s not for the trip,” Tavros pulled one of the bottles out of his backpack slightly, to look at it. “It’s for a friend. This is his favorite kind, so I wanted to get him a real one- not one from camp.”

Upon closer inspection, Karkat noticed the two bottles of soda that Tavros was stealing were both Faygo. Karkat wrinkled his nose. “Fuck, tell your friend he needs better taste in soda. He better thank you for the trouble you went through to get him this piss-poor excuse for a beverage. I’ve had this shit before and it gives me fucking stomachaches, I didn’t even know they still make it. I would’ve thought it'd be put out of business with their pain-inducing acid juice.”

Tavros laughed, putting the soda back into his backpack and zipping it up. “You can tell him yourself when we get back to camp.”

Just as Karkat was about to respond, the two of them heard Jade shout from across the store.

“Karkat! Tavros! We’re leaving!” she called. “Hurry up- the bus is just a few blocks away, we have to be ready to go!”

The two of them stood up, and darted back across the aisles to get back to where Jade was standing, accompanied by Terezi and Dave. All of their snacks were paid for and in their backpacks, and were waiting right at the door. After some quick greetings, Jade pushed open the door to lead her crew outside.

As they stepped outside, Karkat caught sight of the bus as it slowly began to pull over to the bus stop, right at the sidewalk in front of them. There were some other people gathered around the bus stop, waiting for the doors to open, and Jade quickly made her way to the front with the other half-bloods in tow. Though Karkat expected that the group would turn some heads, it seemed that the Mist was working again, because nobody seemed to spare them a glance. They stood at the door on the front of the bus, and finally, it opened.

 _If I wasn’t an idiot,_ Karkat thought to himself. _I might turn back now. Or at least hesitate. Is this worth it? Is this really real? How the fuck do I know for sure._

But whatever, Karkat wasn’t feeling like being smart right now.

He stepped up onto the bus to follow the rest of the half-bloods. Luckily, it wasn’t very full, and all the seats in the back weren’t taken. Jade handed the bus driver enough money for bus fare for their group of five, before the crew made their way to the back of the bus. At the back, they quickly made themselves comfortable in the plush blue bus seats, setting their backpacks on their laps or on the floor.

As Karkat looked out the window at the street, he realized that this was _really_ set in stone now. He was going to Camp Half-Blood. He really hoped he’d made the right decision.


	5. Never take short-cuts through the woods at night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, i'm back and at it again with the updates! today i am here to Complain. it sure sucks that i have to actually write this instead of projecting it into y'all's head in the format of an animated feature film. why? because in writing form, i actually have to WRITE travel chapters instead of just making a neatly spliced travel montage and then BOOM! we're at the location we want to go. "but artie, why don't you just do a time skip?" i hear you cry, and my answer is. no. no, i refuse. i will make things difficult for myself or die trying.
> 
> anyway, enough of me being dramatic. the focus is on jade this chapter, so in case any of you were wondering, dave and karkat won't be the only povs in this story. also, in the future, there may be multiple povs per chapter but we haven't gotten into that yet. love y'all, and enjoy the chapter!!!

Jade had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

She’d been trying hard to act like she did. She had to! This was her first quest, her big break, how she was going to prove herself to everyone back at camp. Normally campers didn’t get quests as early as she did, so there was a lot riding on this. So, the first thing Jade was trying her best to do was act like a leader. A real leader- this was her quest, after all, it was her _job_ to be the leader.

But acting like she knew what she was doing didn’t make it so. She was starting to wish she’d made a better plan back when she was still at camp, with all her friends to help her. She had Terezi and Tavros, of course, but in the nicest way possible, they weren’t exactly who she had in mind to be her questing buddies. She’d would’ve brought Rose and John, but they weren’t even at camp to go on the quest with her. They were at their own homes, in school for the winter and spring, living life like normal kids until they came back to stay at Camp Half-Blood for the summer and fall. So she was stuck with Terezi and Tavros, neither of whom Jade knew very well.

Then, there was Dave and Karkat. She almost felt bad for them, wishing they’d had a less dysfunctional introduction to life as a half-blood. She couldn’t imagine how they were feeling right now.

Well, she could imagine a little bit, but only because Karkat wouldn’t stop complaining.

“My legs are all cramped up,” Karkat announced when they get off the second bus.

Jade’s plan was rather tedious. Starting in Houston, they took the closest bus that was eastward-bound and rode it for as far as it would go, where they would then get off that bus and move onto the next. The process would continue until they reached Atlanta, Georgia. Jade had the whole thing planned out on the notes app on her phone. The process didn’t require much work from the group- just as long as they caught the next bus on time and paid the fare, they could sit in the back and relax until the bus reached its very last stop. 

At least on the bus, they had plenty of time to talk. The questing trio took turns explaining everything about Camp Half-Blood. Sadly, they didn’t have the orientation film, but they explained things well enough. They talked about the cabins- how each Greek god had their own cabin, where their children would stay. Until kids got claimed by their real parents, they would stay in the Hermes cabin. They talked about the environment of Camp Half-Blood, and what made it great- all the fun activities, like capture the flag, sword fighting tournaments, canoeing on the lake, and singing songs at dinner at the end of the day. Both Dave and Karkat seemed pretty excited about it all, and the questing trio even gave them a quick run-down on Greek mythology, so that they knew more about the gods that might just be their parents. Jade was satisfied to see that the trio had successfully convinced Dave and Karkat that being a demigod wasn’t all misery and monster fights.

But by the time they’d gotten on the fifth bus, it was late evening, and they’d run out of things to talk about. Dave and Tavros put in headphones and listened to music in silence. Karkat took out a book to read- a book that looked like something a repressed southern housewife would read, if Jade was being honest. Jade and Terezi talked for a while, but eventually fell silent.

It got worse when night fell. Dave and Karkat were pretty upset to find out that they wouldn’t be stopping to rest for the night.

“We have to keep moving,” Jade explained, trying not to make them more disappointed. They stood on the sidewalk, waiting for their next bus to arrive, and the sun was below the horizon. “With five demigods, we’re bound to attract monsters if we’re in one place for too long with nowhere to stay.”

“It doesn’t mean you can’t sleep!” Terezi tried to reassure them. “We’ll sleep in shifts on the bus! Then we’ll wake you up when we switch buses, and you can go right back to sleep when we get on the next one. Sure, it’s not ideal, but it’ll be fine.”

Karkat groaned. “I fucking hate this. I can feel the crick in my neck already…”

Jade wished that she didn’t get so cranky when she was tired. The group _barely_ got through the night, and it wasn’t without snappy comments towards each other, and struggling to sleep on the bus. Luckily, since there was barely anybody on the bus so late at night, they could take up whole rows on cushioned seats and sprawl out. The bus drivers didn’t ask questions, and these drives were always almost completely silent. Karkat was right about the crick in the neck, though. Jade felt sore and exhausted.

The morning eventually came, and they continued on the day like the last. Even if they were miles more tired. Luckily, they periodically ate their snacks throughout the day, so they weren’t nearly as hungry.

At around 8:30pm on the second day of travel, Jade realized that her group had run into an unexpected problem.

“We’re out of money!” she exclaimed out loud in initial dread, thumbing through her wallet.

Tavros stared at her with a horrorstuck expression. “You can’t be serious.”

“What?!” Karkat shouted standing up abruptly from where he was sitting on the bench. “You’re telling me that on _this_ stop, now that the bus dropped us off in the middle of fucking nowhere in Alabama, and _we’re out of money?!”_ He gestured angrily to the landscape around them- a bus stop on the side of a road that curled around the base of a small, rocky mountain. On the other side of them, there was a great, green forest that stretched for miles into a valley that held a small roadside town, and nothing else. Karkat went on, looking more frustrated than ever. “I can’t fucking believe this. I cannot _fucking_ believe this. What are we supposed to do now? _Hitch-hike?_ What, and end up getting picked up by some creep? No fucking way. I don’t even know what we’re supposed to do!”

Dave frowned and furrowed his brows, looking over at Karkat with concern. “Hey, it’s okay dude.” he said softly. “I’m sure Jade had a plan to get us out of here. I mean, fuck, she’s gotten us all the way to Alabama.”

Dave looked at Jade expectantly.

Jade swallowed, and she tried to think very hard of what to do. Oh, how she wished she were the child of one of the clever gods in that moment. An Athena or Hephaestus or Hermes or Nemesis kid would be able to think of something. Defeated, Jade shook her head, and instead looked over at Terezi. “How about you, Tez? Any ideas?”

“I’m so glad you asked!” Terezi grinned weakly- she was tired too. “I remember the map, I know exactly where we are. There’s a town in the valley down there; the road passes right through it. We’d be heading down there anyway. But, it’s getting dark. Walking along the side of the road would take too long. My plan is that we’ll take a shortcut through the forest, walking straight to the town down there. We’ll stay there for the night and recuperate, Iris-message camp, and figure everything out in the morning.”

“...Walking through the forest?” Karkat’s eyes widened. “Alone? In the dark?”

Dave nudged him in the shoulder. “What, are you scared?”

“Oh course I’m scared!” Karkat snapped, scowling at Dave. “And you should be too. It’s walking in the woods at night, in the middle of nowhere! We could get lost, or mauled by a bear, or something! This plan sounds _way_ too risky.”

“Do you have a better one?” Terezi raised an eyebrow.

A long moment of silence was a good enough answer to that question.

“It’s settled, then.” Jade cut the tension. “And it’ll be _fine,_ trust me. I can even commune with the plants of the forest, so that they can give us directions on where to go! There won’t be any risk of us getting lost. And most of us can fight, so we won’t be getting mauled by any bears. It’ll be perfectly safe, we just need to get to that town.

Karkat crossed her arms. “There’s no need to rub it in that I can’t fight…” he grumbled.

“Wait, hang on, are we gonna _completely_ skip over the fact that Jade said she could _talk to plants?!”_ Dave commented, sounding incredulous.

“It’s a Demeter kid thing,” Jade explained dryly. “Demigods typically have powers associated with their godly parents. It’s a whole can of worms that I don’t wanna get into right now. Let’s just get going, I’m tired.”

Dave didn’t look even remotely satisfied with Jade’s answer, but he dropped it nonetheless.

One by one, the group hopped the short fence that separated the road and the forest. They began on the walk, and started towards the forest. Once they reached the trees, Jade stopped so that she could talk to one of the trees. She placed her hand on the bark of the tree, and closed her eyes.

_Hello, good evening!_ She said to it. _I hate to bug you, but do you think you could give us directions? We’re heading down to the little roadside town in the valley, which way should we go so that we don’t get lost?_

The tree seemed concerned. _Child of Demeter, what are you doing out so late? Monsters are crawling._

Jade blinked, surprised. _Really? Well, we’ll probably be okay, we won’t be here for long. We just need to get to the town in the valley. Could you please give me some directions?_

_Of course,_ it replied. _Continue northeast, straight as you can. It is only an hour from this place._

_Thank you,_ Jade said quickly. _Good bye._ She removed her hand from the tree, and turned back to her companions, standing behind her patiently. Out of her pocket, Jade took her compass, and examined to see which direction northeast was.

“Good news, guys, I know where to go,” Jade said confidently. “Follow me!”

And the group continued walking into the forest, with Jade in the lead.

The longer this quest went on, the more that Jade was feeling anxious and inadequate. It wasn’t enough that she was under so much pressure. Nobody got quests this early- it was why everyone at camp was so surprised when Jade got hers! Back at camp, even Chiron had constantly reminded Jade to be careful, that she was still inexperienced, and that this was a big responsibility she was undertaking. She wished that she could’ve talked to Rose or John about it. Looking after the baby demigods was seriously stressing Jade out.

Speaking of the baby demis, Jade glanced over at them with a curious expression. Dave seemed to be adjusting to their whole situation really well. He’d barely complained the whole trip. As he was walking through the forest, he had his sword drawn and in his hand, but he wasn’t swinging it around carelessly- Dave clearly knew a lot about swords, and he knew better than that. But, the same couldn’t be said about Karkat. The day before, Terezi was kind enough to lend Karkat one of the many knives and daggers she kept on her at all times. Karkat didn’t have a weapon, so it was only fair to give him _something._ Karkat was a little excited about it, and would make pretend slashes and fighting moves with the dagger when he thought that no one was looking.

The demis were one thing, but Jade’s questing buddies were a whole different thing. Jade felt a little guilty that she wasn’t so grateful for Terezi and Tavros coming along with her, but she couldn’t help but remember that they were not what she wanted. Chiron had suggested that she bring along experienced half-bloods, and that made Tavros an obvious choice, since he’d been at camp for even longer than some of the councilors. But, Jade also felt bad for him. He’d barely left camp since he was eight and had never gotten a quest. When it was announced that Jade got _her_ quest, she noticed how Tavros was obviously jealous of her. She couldn’t blame him, honestly. Camp Half-Blood was great, but she couldn’t imagine being trapped there for half of her life. On the other hand, there was Terezi. Terezi was nice enough, was friends with a lot of Jade’s friends at camp, and she was a great fighter. Terezi wasn’t bad, she was just… weird. Jade had chosen to bring her for very complicated reasons, but the short version of the story was that she had to choose a second questing-buddy on the spot, and Terezi was the first person to pop into her head. Luckily, Terezi had proved to be pretty helpful, but no one could deny the fact that she was really weird.

Speak of the devil, Terezi stopped in her tracks and whipped her head around. Though Jade hadn’t been keeping track of the time, the group had been walking for a while. “Everyone stop!” Terezi ordered. “Shhhhhhh,” she hushed, before anyone could say anything.

Terezi sniffed the air. She licked her finger, and put it up in the air like she was measuring the wind, before she lowered her hand and licked her finger again.

“What’s wrong?” Jade asked in a hushed voice.

Terezi’s eyes narrowed and she frowned. “I smell monsters. And if I can smell monsters, they can smell us. Everybody get your weapons, and stay on your toes.”

Jade’s heart skipped a beat, and she realized something. She realized that she’d forgotten to tell the other half-bloods about what the tree had told her- that there were monsters nearby. Jade stared at the ground and didn’t say anything, not wanting to embarrass herself more by confessing this. _Stupid memory problems, stupid stupid dumb._

Terezi didn’t yet unsheath her cane, since she still needed it to maneuver the forest, but everyone else got their weapons ready. I took my rifle out of my bag and loaded it, carrying it cautiously with the barrel pointed down at the ground. Tavros turned his bracelet back into its lance form, and Dave and Karkat both held their blades closer to them, as they already had them drawn. Though Terezi had been right about monster smells every time in the past, nobody else heard anything. The forest was quiet, and no monsters came to attack them.

Significantly more paranoid, the group continued the walk.

Soon enough, it was completely dark. The chirps of cicadas and crickets filled the groups’ ears. It was a cloudless night, and a new moon, so the only thing there was to light their path was the stars. They all walked close to each other, unable to see each other that well, but hearing the sounds of twigs and dirt crunching beneath each others’ shoes.

Eventually the trees thinned out, and they reached a strange clearing in the forest. It was much brighter now that the sky was uncovered by trees, and their eyes had adjusted to the dark.

“This isn’t a natural clearing,” Jade commented, after investigating the clearing for a few minutes. “It looks like it was all ruined, somehow. There’s a bunch of trees that have been knocked over and crushed, and it doesn’t look like it’s been like that for too long. Maybe only a few weeks or months. Maybe there was a lightning strike? It looks too big for that.” Jade was scrambling to find any other explanation than _‘monster.’_ The group was already on edge.

Several more minutes passed. Dave and Karkat were sitting on the ground at this point.

Jade and Tavros came across something in the center of the clearing- a large imprint into the dirt that seemed suspiciously like a footprint, but it was really hard to tell in the dark. Still, it was hard to ignore, or explain as something other than a monster. Jade had cleaned off her glasses at least seven times in the past few minutes, trying to get a better look at anything.

Jade squinted at the ground. “I mean, it might not be a footprint. And you know, all this destruction in the forest is from weeks ago. If there was a monster, it’s probably gone by now.”

“Cyclops.” Tavros mumbled.

Jade furrowed her brows. “I doubt it, cyclops are usually smaller, and besides, there aren't any cyclops in…” her voice trailed off as she realized that Tavros wasn’t looking down at the imprint in the ground. He was looking up, over Jade’s shoulder. Jade blinked slowly. “…in Alabama…”

“Does _he_ know that?” Tavros’s voice was filled with fear now.

Almost as soon as he’d said it, Jade’s heart dropped. Despite her terror, she slowly turned around to look behind her.

Standing at the tree-line, there was a looming humanoid figure outlined by dim starlight. It was at least nine or ten feet tall, with an oversized wooden club in one hand. It wore what looked like ancient Greek robes, something that Jade recognized quickly, and it had no hair. The figure took a thundering step forward, and the starlight illuminated its single, large _eye_ in the center of its forehead.

Jade froze up, and her hand tightened on her rifle. “Cyclops!” she shouted in a panic.

Terezi, Dave, and Karkat all jumped to their feet, and came running towards where Jade and Tavros were standing.

Jade put a hand on Karkat’s shoulder. “Stay out of this, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Karkat’s expression went sour. “Fuck no, I’m not about to stand to the side and just let you guys do whatever. Hiding is stupid- if Dave can help fight it, so can I.”

“It’s charging!” Tavros shouted over them, and he was right. The cyclops started towards them at an alarming speed. It was growling and snarling, and its footsteps boomed against the ground as it picked up it’s speed even more.

“Hide!” Jade shouted at Karkat, more desperately.

“NO!”

Before Jade and Karkat even finished their bickering, Terezi was already running towards the cyclops with her swords drawn. And before Jade could react, Karkat went running after her with his dagger in his hand. Jade cried out in anger and indignation, but she couldn’t stop him. With no choice left, Dave and Tavros went running into the fight as well. But Jade didn’t run all the way to the cyclops, she stopped and knelt down in the dirt on one knee, and dug her hand down into the soil.

Suddenly, huge tree roots and vines shot up from the ground, and wrapped around the cyclops's legs to try and stop it in its tracks (another Demeter-kid power). It tripped up long enough for Terezi to jump up and slash at it. It left a long, bleeding gash from it’s collarbone to the bottom of its ribs.

Karkat went running towards the monster too, and Jade nearly screamed at him to get out of the way, but the words got stuck in her throat. The cyclops prepared to swing the wooden club down, right at Karkat. To Jade’s horror and unsurprise, Karkat froze. But by some dumb luck, just before the club hit Karkat in the face, Tavros grabbed the back of Karkat’s shirt and wrenched him out of the way, letting Karkat trip back behind him and fall onto his back.

But the club came swinging back, and Tavros was hit in the shoulder and almost stumbled to the ground, but he caught himself by stabbing his lance into the cyclops’s stomach and pulling himself back to his feet. Because the cyclops was slow moving with a heavy weapon, this gave Dave enough time to dart around behind the cyclops and flank it, and stab it with his sword _in the asscheek._ That must’ve _really_ hurt.

Jade willed the vines to wrap around the cyclops more and more, before cocking her gun and pointing it towards the cyclops’s face. She _needed_ a good shot at it, but couldn’t get one

Terezi followed Dave’s lead by attacking it from behind, and once again, she jumped at it. This time, it let out a scream of agony as Terezi’s swords dug into it’s back, and she used them to _climb up its back_ like a goddamn climbing wall. From the other side, I saw one of Terezi’s swords piercing all the way through the cyclops’s throat, before Terezi leapt down off of its back. The creature was stunned and struggling to breathe.

“Jade, _now!”_ Terezi shouted from across the clearing.

I didn’t need to be told twice- I pulled the trigger on my rifle.

The cyclops let out an indignant, choked scream as the bullet lodged in the center of its eye, and through its head. It stumbled on its footing, completely tripping over the vines around it’s legs, and falling to the ground. Tavros quickly darted out of the way, grabbing Karkat by the shoulders and pulling him along, so that he wouldn’t be crushed by the falling cyclops body.

When its monstrous body hit the forest floor, it crumbled into dust and disintegrated into shadows.

And the forest was silent.

Jade was still sweating, and adrenaline was still coursing through her veins, but her arms fell lax. She struggled to even keep holding her rifle within her sweaty palms. She turned the safety of her gun back on, and mindlessly dropped it to the ground. It harmlessly fell on a patch of moss, and her gaze returned to the other demigods, who were still in as much exhausted shock as Jade was. Dave and Terezi were standing behind where the cyclops was, and Terezi was covered in monster blood. Tavros was off to the side, with Karkat sitting on the ground next to him.

But Jade’s eyes narrowed and muscles tensed again as her gaze fixed on Karkat. He was covered in blood and dirt, eyes wide with shock.

Jade tried to take a deep breath or rationalize her thoughts, but she couldn’t. Her hands balled into fists as she marched towards Karkat, and he quickly noticed as she approached. He definitely noticed that Jade looked furious. He quickly realized that he was probably in trouble, and his face turned into an expression of _“oh shit.”_

“What. Were. You. _Thinking?!”_ Jade shouted at him with all the fury she could muster.

He froze up, opening his mouth to speak. But for the first time in this whole trip, he couldn’t seem to find anything to say.

“You idiot, you could’ve gotten yourself killed!” Jade’s brows furrowed in anger and frustration. “You said it yourself, you can’t fight- you’ve been complaining this whole time that you’re the only one here who doesn’t know how to fight! In fact, you’re _always_ complaining about _everything!_ You have no idea how important this is to me! I _need_ this quest to go right- do you have _any_ idea what would happen to me if something happened to you?! I’d be ruined!!! This kind of stuff is dangerous, you can’t just act like you’re invincible! People _die_ on these quests.”

“I just…” Karkat blinked, still not finding the words. “I… I was…”

Terezi frowned, and she’d flinched at Jade’s venomous words. “Lay off, Jade, he’s still just a baby demi. He doesn’t know anything about quests. He was just trying to help.”

“Yeah, come on, Jade.” Dave backed up Terezi. “And for real, just because people have died on quests before doesn’t mean that _we’re_ going to. It’s like getting a rare terminal disease out of millions of people, or getting into a fatal car wreck. Bad stuff like that doesn’t happen to just _anyone._ It just happens to a few unlucky people. It’s random.”

Jade looked from Dave to Karkat, and once again was hit with the realization that they really didn’t know anything at all. “NO!” she yelled. “That’s not comparable- bad things _do_ happen for a reason, and they’re _going_ to happen to us if you’re not careful!”

Once again that whole group went silent.

Jade took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. She knew that if she continued doing this, she would just get more and more angry, and that wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be to the baby demis. So instead, she looked over at Tavros. “I think you should take this from here,” she said. “Since this kind of… applies to what happened with you. You know, when you first got to camp?”

Tavros looked a little upset that Jade had pinned this explanation on him, but he didn’t argue with her. “Oh, uh, ok.” he looked over at Dave and Karkat. “…I think you better sit down for this.”

So they did, The group all walked closer together. Tavros, Dave, and Karkat all sat in a circle in the moonlit forest clearing. Terezi had decided to take a walk in the meantime. Jade stood a few feet away from the group sitting in a circle, since she still needed some time to cool down and gather her thoughts. But, Jade could still easily listen in the conversation they all were having.

“So, uh, like I mentioned a few days ago, I got to camp when I was eight,” Tavros began. “I ran away from home for um… personal reasons. I was from Chicago, so it wasn’t as long of a way to travel to New York, but as an eight-year-old it was still pretty far. I just knew that I had to go to Camp Half-Blood. And it was just my luck that along the way I met this other kid who was heading to Camp Half-Blood too! He was twelve-years-old or so. And surprisingly enough, even though we were a couple of kids who would be easy to pick off by monsters, our travels were safe with no trouble. The gods must’ve been watching over us. But, I guess that luck didn’t last long. When we got to Montauk, just a few miles from camp, we were attacked by a manticore…” his eyes trailed down to the ground. “We both survived, but…”

Tavros reached down to the cuff of his jeans on his left leg, and rolled it up a few more times. It uncovered a bronze, metal leg where flesh should’ve been.

Dave and Karkat had matching expressions of horror.

“The manticore paralyzed me,” Tavros’s voice was heavy and sad. “A demigod who can’t run is a dead demigod. So, they replaced my legs with prosthetics made of celestial bronze. And I’ve been like this ever since.”

“You were still just a little kid…” Dave’s face was creased with worry. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Karkat nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I can’t even imagine what that must’ve been like.”

Tavros frowned. “I didn’t tell you all that so you could pity me- I’m trying to warn you. Jade’s right. Bad things do happen to just anyone, and acting like you’re invincible is a great way of getting killed. I’ve been at camp for eight years, and I’ve seen a lot of half-bloods learning this the hard way, so I’m telling you now. The gods don’t always care about you. They won’t always protect you when you’re in danger. Monsters will try to kill you if they get the chance. So please, don’t give them that chance. Understood?”

Both Karkat and Dave nodded, and to Jade, they really seemed like they _did_ understand.

Having sufficiently calmed down, Jade walked back over to the rest of the demigods. She picked up her rifle on the way, and collapsed it again, before putting it back into her backpack. As she approached, Tavros raised an eyebrow at her. Jade mouthed a _“thank you,”_ back to him.

Terezi had finally returned from her walk, she wore a big grin that broke the icy tension.

“Well, I have some good news!” she announced, cheerfully as ever. “While you guys were all talking, I scouted out ahead and sniffed out the trail, and guess what! That little town in the valley is only a quarter mile away! And even better news? There’s a Denny’s right there, which is a twenty-four-hour restaurant! So basically, we can stop there for dinner, and then find a motel to stay for the night.”

Jade fixed her glasses and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “That’s great and all, but we have a solid $7.25, which wasn’t enough money to pay for all five of our bus fare- it’s not gonna be enough to pay for Denny’s or a night at a motel.”

“Oh…” Terezi’s expression faltered a little. “I guess I was just thinking that Tavros could maybe lend us a little Hermes-kid expert thievery action.”

Jade shook her head. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”

“Aw, please?” Tavros smiled at her. “It’ll just be this one time to get us back on our feet. We’ll use the last $7 we have to tip the waiter at Denny’s- we’ll only be stealing from the corporation, and the worker still gets paid. I won’t even steal any money for the motel, I’ll just pick the lock and sneak into an empty room. They won’t even know we were there. You can trust me, I haven't stolen _anything_ on this whole quest.”

Dave poorly disguised a laugh as a cough. Jade narrowed her eyes. _Suspicious._

But, Jade eventually gave in. “Ok, fine. But just this once.” she cast a glare at Terezi and Tavros. “And if we get in trouble for it, I’m blaming both of you.”


	6. A little bit of crime never hurt anybody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi  
> i have nothing to say for myself
> 
> so uh. hi. im back, after like four months lmao. im so sorry i went on break for so long, i got really wrapped up with schoolwork and have been feeling kind of burnt out on homestuck in general. this story was untouched for months, until i knocked out this whole chapter in like a week. im still super inspired by this story, and i hope to continue it in the future! Kind of weird i deciding to work on writing now, of all times, since it is finals week and i have other work i really should be doing. but uhhhhh yeah hopefully i still have motivation to continue.

For the past eight years, Tavros had barely left Camp Half-Blood. And despite having been at camp for years and years, it was the very first time he’d been on a quest. The only times when Tavros had left camp were occasional day-visits to New York City, since it was a short drive from Camp Half-Blood. But, he never did much in these visits. He definitely never went out to eat.

This meant, of course, that this was the first time he’d gone to a Denny’s in eight years.

At first, everyone was hesitant to order a lot of food. But, Tavros and Terezi assured them that they’d be paying the same amount of money, no matter how big the bill was. That amount of money was none. They were stealing, after all.

So of course, they ended up ordering a lot of food. Luckily, the Denny’s portions were more than enough for one person, and the demigods had been eating granola bars and potato chips for the past two days. Nobody was ordering one specific thing for themself- instead they ordered a bunch of different things for the whole group to pass around and share. Two plates of pancakes, a plate of french toast, two breakfast sandwiches, and a side of eggs and bacon for each of the orders. The waitress was pretty stunned.

Once they finished eating, they stacked up all the plates neatly, left the remaining few dollars that Jade had in her wallet, and left the restaurant without paying.

After they left the Denny’s, they wandered around the streets for a few minutes before they found a small motel. It was across the street from a laundromat and gas station. Since it was so late at night, there was no one working there at the office, and there was a certain window of time that people were allowed to reserve a room. The window, unsurprisingly, was already over, since it was 10pm. Luckily, that wasn’t a problem.

Tavros chose one of the empty rooms, and waved his hand over the lock, where it unlocked with a click. Magically picking locks was a Hermes-kid power that was frequently very helpful.

It was a simple, generic motel room. Two queen-sized beds were in the main room, with a small T.V. mounted to the wall in front of them. A recliner armchair and side table sat in the corner, next to the large window obscured by tacky curtains. By the front door, there was another door that led into the bathroom. Everyone got comfortable in the room pretty quickly.

“Okay, everyone!” Jade clapped her hands together, standing in front of the T.V. where they all could see her. “We’ve got the whole night to rest, use it well. I’m imposing a bedtime whether you guys like it or not, because we need to rest. In the meantime, this is the perfect opportunity to take showers! Please, guys, take a shower. We all need it. After everybody showers, we’re going to Iris-message Jane, back at camp. Until then, shower. Hang out. Watch some T.V, because why not?”

Everyone was pretty satisfied after Jade’s speech. It was good news after all- none of them had showered in the last couple of days. And everyone definitely agreed that it would be really nice to lounge around in a motel room for hours, instead of hopping from bus to bus or trudging through the woods.

“I call the first shower!” Dave announced loudly.

Tavros untied his shoes, and kicked them off onto the floor. He was starting to think that maybe platform boots weren’t the best choice of footwear for a cross-country quest.

Terezi turned on the T.V. so that they’d all have some background noise, which was nice, and it felt less weird and lonely. Everyone in the group had changed into their pajamas, as they’d been wearing the same clothes for the past two days and weren’t comfortable. While Dave claimed the first shower, Jade left the motel room to find if the motel had a washing machine, so that she could wash the group’s dirty clothes from the past two days. In the meantime, Tavros sat down on the motel bed, surrounded by pillows, and his backpack right next to him. Karkat was sitting at the foot of the bed, watching T.V, but he noticed as Tavros sat down.

Karkat frowned, and kept glancing back and forth, like he was internally debating whether or not to ask a question. “Hey, if you’re fine with it, could I ask about the robo-legs?”

Tavros blinked, a little taken aback. But he quickly realized that Karkat had asked this because Tavros was wearing basketball shorts instead of his normal black jeans, it made his prosthetic legs significantly more visible. “Oh, uhhh, sure! I mean, I guess it kind of depends on the question, but you can totally ask, if you’re curious.”

“Great, I have a few,” Karkat exhaled sharply, relieved. “Can you feel your legs at all? If you got them when you were still a kid, did you have to get them replaced every couple months while you were growing? Where do they cut off? Oh, and are they attached permanently?”

“Um…” Tavros paused for a moment to process all of Karkat’s questions. “Ok, I can answer two of those in one go. Yes, I can feel them, but I couldn’t always. When I first got them, I couldn’t feel them at all, but because I had to get them replaced frequently just like you said, the Hephaestus kids who built them kept adding stuff to them to make them work better. So now, I can feel pretty much like normal, and I can even feel pain in them. Which kinda sucks, since I already got phantom pains. I’ve stopped growing, so I don’t need to get them replaced anymore unless they’re really damaged, or something. They cut off around my upper thigh, and yeah, they’re meant to be attached permanently.”

Karkat nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied with those answers.

For a while, they were quiet. Terezi was still lounging on the other bed, listening to the T.V, Dave was still in the shower, and Jade had yet to come back from doing laundry. Tavros opened up his backpack to sort through his belongings, and he instantly saw the two bottles of Faygo still sitting safely in the bag. Almost involuntarily, he smiled- he knew that Gamzee was going to be thrilled by such a gift. Tavros reached past the soda bottles to the bottom of the bag, where he took out his journal. He hadn’t written in it that much during this whole trip, which was strange, considering that there was a lot to write about.

“Hey, Karkat?” Tavros cast a glance over at Karkat, who looked away from the T.V. upon hearing his name. “I’ve got to say, uh, what you did today with the cyclops; that took guts.”

Karkat raised an eyebrow. “You think so? I guess I thought that it was stupid of me.”

“It definitely was,” Tavros agreed with a teasing laugh. “But, it still took guts. There’s not a lot of baby demigods who can say that they ran straight at a cyclops on their second _ever_ monster fight. Even though you were scared when we were walking in the forest, you were really brave in the face of danger. I think that you’ll make a really great fighter if you work hard.”

“I… thanks, that really means a lot.” Karkat’s face softened with the ghost of a proud smile.

Tavros leaned back onto the pile of pillows at the head of the bed. “No problem. And, when we get to camp, you can totally hang out with me and my friends, if you want.”

From the other bed, Terezi laughed, and flopped over on her side to face Tavros and Karkat. “Try not to scare him off, Tavros,” she wore a bright grin as she leaned back further onto the pillows. Then, she turned her full attention to Karkat. “I’m only half joking, the whole camp is pretty freaked out by his friends.”

“There’s nothing about Aradia or Gamzee that’s scary once you get to know them,” Tavros rolled his eyes. “Terezi, you’re not saying that _you’re_ scared of them, are you?”

“No!” Terezi excused quickly, and paused for a moment. “Well, maybe Aradia gives me the shivers sometimes with her creepy ghost powers, but that’s not the same thing. I’m not _scared_ of either of them. I’m just saying that maybe it wouldn’t be the most welcoming introduction to camp life for Karkat, and you just think they’re not scary because you’re all practically joint by the hip and don’t know any different.”

Tavros just shrugged. He didn’t want to start an argument over this. It wouldn’t be worth it, and it would be awkward for Karkat. Besides, Karkat would learn everything soon enough once he got to camp and was actually introduced to everyone.

After Terezi’s remark about his friends, Tavros was reminded of how so many other campers were frightened of them. Tavros could understand _why_ the other kids thought this, but he also knew that if they actually got to know Aradia or Gamzee, they'd realize how sorely mistaken they were. Aradia, being a daughter of Hades, tended to creep people out with her ghostly powers. But Tavros knew that in reality, she made terrible puns all the time and had an extreme archeology hyperfixation. Then there was Gamzee, who Tavros had no idea why anyone was scared of. Gamzee remained nice and friendly to everyone else at camp, even when they said rude things about him. Maybe they were just jealous, because Gamzee was a son of Dionysus, so Mr. D treated him a little nicer than everyone else. Tavros wasn’t sure where the frightening rumors came from, but Aradia and Gamzee were still nicer to him than anyone else at camp. They were his best friends, and they had been for years.

It made Tavros wonder how they were doing at camp without him.

Soon after, Dave got out of the shower, and Terezi took the next one. Tavros and Karkat were still both sitting on the bed so Dave took a seat on the floor that was between the two beds. Jade came back with their dirty clothes, which she’d given a quick wash and in the washing machines that were open for communal use in the motel.

“Wait, how are we gonna sleep if there are five of us and only two beds?” Dave asked, looking up at Jade. He looked unrecognizable without his shades on.

“Good question!” Jade said with a sheepish smile. “We’re gonna have to share, sorry. Me and Terezi are going to share one, but that leaves you three boys with just one bed. Um… you can figure that out amongst yourselves, I guess.”

“Sharing one bed with _two_ other people sounds like a nightmare.” Karkat grumbled, crossing his arms.

Tavros frowned. “I’d rather sleep in the recliner.”

“Aw, you really want to get rid of us that badly?” Dave said teasingly.

“Uhh, no, that’s not it at all.” Tavros replied, fidgeting with the zipper on his backpack. “Don’t take it personally. I’m autistic, and being really close to other people like that is a sensory issue of mine. Like I said, it’s not personal, I feel that way about almost everyone. I’ll just sleep in the recliner, it’s fine.”

Dave blinked, looking a little surprised. “Oh, my bad. That’s cool, then.”

Karkat huffed loudly. “So I have to share with Dave?”

“Hell yeah, boys night!” Dave laughed. “Oh my god, it’ll be just like a sleepover.” Dave was grinning and gaping as he looked around the room. “I’ve never had a sleepover before! This is gonna be so fun.”

Another loud huff from Karkat, who was obviously annoyed and not nearly excited about this ‘sleepover’ as Dave was.

After a long time of sitting around the room, watching T.V, and each of the half-bloods taking turns showering, everyone was growing extremely tired. It grew to the point where everyone was under the covers, half-paying attention to the T.V, while also half-asleep. Luckily, since it was a warm night in late May, the other half bloods lent some of their extra blankets they didn’t want to Tavros, where he was sleeping on the recliner.

Eventually, Jade took the remote and turned off the T.V.

“Big day tomorrow, everyone,” she said weakly. “We’re going to Iris-message camp in the morning, and leave as quickly as we can. Then, we have to figure out what to do from there. I don’t really know what.”

“We’ll figure it out in the morning,” Terezi sighed, flopping over away from Jade.

Jade was staring blankly up at the ceiling. “I guess so.”

Though there was no formal _“good night,”_ nobody spoke after that, and the lights were all off. So, Tavros took that as an invitation to roll over and go to sleep. And after such a long day of bus-hopping, walks through the forest, monster fights, and crimes, it didn’t take long for him to drift off into unconsciousness.

⁂

To no one’s surprise, Jade was the one there to wake everyone up when the morning came. At 8am sharp, an alarm from Jade’s phone went off, and she was quick to get up from bed and flip on all of the lights. Everyone groaned, not wanting to wake up, but eventually, they all reluctantly did.

Tavros was the first in the bathroom to change into his normal clothes. He was really glad that Jade had washed all their clothes yesterday, because he only had one pair of non-ripped jeans that he could wear around mortals without them seeing his metal legs. So, he put on those same patch-covered black jeans, a black band t-shirt, and he tied a checkered flannel around his waist. He slipped his fingerless gloves and celestial bronze lance-bracelet over his hands, and laced up his black platform boots. Finally, he put on some messy black eyeliner, and purposefully smudged it.

A curt knock on the bathroom door. “Oh my god, are you done yet?” Terezi complained.

Tavros unlocked the door and opened it, his hands up defensively. “I’m done! Sorry, I didn’t even think I was taking that long.”

Terezi shrugged, and she walked past Tavros into the bathroom, who walked out to let her close the door and lock it once again.

Tavros walked back into the main hotel room, and saw the other three demigods all sitting there. Jade was searching through her backpack, seemingly looking for something. Karkat was on his bed in his pajamas, lying on his chest with his chin propped up on his hands, watching T.V. Dave was sitting up against the pillows at the head of the bed, and he already had his sunglasses on. Actually, as Tavros thought about it, he didn’t recall Dave taking _off_ his sunglasses last night, either. Had he slept with them on? That was strange.

“Ah-ha!” Jade exclaimed triumphantly, “I found it!”

She dug her hand into her backpack and pulled out the thing she was looking for, holding it high up for all to see. Tavros recognized it immediately as a gold drachma- the currency needed for Iris-messaging someone. Dave and Karkat looked far more confused.

“A coin?” Karkat raised an eyebrow.

“A gold drachma,” Jade smiled at them. “Ancient Greek money that the gods use. We need it in order to send a message back to someone at camp. It’s called Iris-messaging. Iris is the messenger goddess- if you toss a gold drachma through a rainbow and she’s not too busy, she’ll help you make a message to anybody in the world?”

Dave and Karkat exchanged a skeptical glance. They tended to do that a lot these days. Jade definitely noticed this, and exchanged a similar glance with Tavros.

“Here, I’ll show you how it works once Terezi gets out of the bathroom.” Jade assured them.

The bathroom door flew open all of a sudden, Startling Tavros. Terezi came rushing out of the bathroom like a hurricane. “I’m here, I’m here, do it now! I wanna talk to Roxy!” She was wearing yet another Hawaiian shirt, this time paired with red Bermuda shorts.

“Oh, you want to message Roxy?” Jade tilted her head. “Good idea, I think they’d probably be the most chill to talk to right now. Especially considering… our predicament.”

Tavros grimaced. “...Right… Uh, should we even tell them?”

Jade’s face flashed with nervousness. “Ummm, I don’t know. They might be able to help, but at the same time, we don’t know who they might be with right now, or if they’ll tell other people. They are a camp counselor, after all. Honestly, they _should_ tell other people if they heard about our predicament.”

“Let’s just wait to see who they’re with,” Terezi suggested. “If they’re alone, we tell them, if they’re not, then we won’t.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tavros shrugged. He looked over at Jade, who nodded in agreement.

Tavros could only imagine how confused Dave and Karkat were as they taught how to use an Iris message. First, they took a glass of water, and set it on the windowsill of the hotel. They angled it so that the morning sun would hit it just right and it would act as a prism, projecting a small rainbow into the hotel room. Tavros, Terezi, and Jade gathered around the glass of water on the windowsill, and Jade took the gold drachma between two fingers. From a few feet behind them on the other side of the bed, Dave and Karkat were watching intently.

“Roxy Lalonde, Camp Half-Blood.” Jade stated firmly.

Jade tossed up the coin towards the window, and it landed perfectly inside of the glass. As soon as it hit the water the coin completely vanished.

And just as Tavros expected, a shimmering projection of light and mist appeared in front of the window. The colors of the rainbow began to form the projection. Tavros glanced back behind him, and Dave and Karkat were gaping. The colors continued to spiral, until finally, it morphed into a proper image of none other than Roxy Lalonde, standing inside what Tavros was pretty sure was the Athena Cabin.

Roxy’s head whipped up, their pink dyed curls bouncing around their head. As soon as they saw the Iris message, and the people on the other side, their face lit up.

“Oh em gee!!” they exclaimed. “You finally called! We were all getting so worried. How are you doing? How’d it go finding the baby demis?”

Jade looked relieved by Roxy’s positivity. “Oh, it went great! Both of them are safe and sound! They’re actually sitting behind us right now, I don’t know if you can see them. But, you can meet them super soon! As soon as we get back to camp!”

Roxy squealed. “I can’t wait! Ohmigod, this is so exciting. But I do have to ask,” her expression shifted to concern. “How soon is soon? When will you be back- where are you now?”

“We’re an hour’s drive away from Atlanta,” Tavros filled in for Jade. “The plan is to take the train up to New York.”

Roxy frowned. “Trains are expensive. You have money for tickets for all five of you?”

For a moment, nobody said anything. Nobody wanted to break the news that they did not, infact, have enough money for five train tickets. In fact, they didn’t have any money at all.

“Yes!” Jade suddenly answered. “Yes, we have plenty, no need to worry. And um, yeah! I think that’s all, we just wanted to check in. You know, let you know that we’re doing just fine and all that jazz.” Terezi and Tavros both looked at her with confusion. Why was she lying? It seemed like Roxy was alone.

“That’s good to hear,” Roxy replied. “Let me know if you have any issues, but I’ve really got to head out. Sorry, this was kind of a bad time for you to call. You kids have fun! I hope you kicked some monster butt, and tell the baby demis that I can’t wait to meet them!”

“Bye Roxy! Great to hear from you!” Jade said cheerily.

“Nonononono wait-!” Terezi tried to interrupt, but Jade already swiped through the projection of cut, and the Iris message cut out.

The room was silent again, and boiling with new tension.

Tavros furrowed his brows, looking at Jade with just confusion. Terezi was aghast, clearly insulted that Jade had completely ignored what they agreed on- to tell Roxy the truth if they were alone. Briefly, Tavros glanced at Dave and Karkat in the back. Karkat quickly looked away, like he would rather be somewhere else, and Dave was spaced out, fidgeting with the sheets on the bed.

Jade backed up, and didn’t even look up at Terezi and Tavros. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said before either of them could get a word out. “But I can explain. Look, I really don't want Roxy to know how much I messed up. They were the one who put in a good word for me to help me get a quest in the first place, and I really don’t want to let them down, and think that they made a mistake by suggesting I go rescue Dave and Karkat. I really admire Roxy! And I know how disappointed they’d be if I told them. I’d just become another example of why they don’t let baby demis have quests.”

“I mean, I understand that, but they still could’ve helped us!” Terezi sighed.

“What could’ve they done to help us? Venmo us five-hundred dollars?” Jade mumbled dejectedly. “Look, we made it this far on our own and I’m not about to give up now. We’re getting back to New York whatever it takes. Even if that means…” she sighed. “A little bit of crime.”

Terezi’s sour attitude quickly changed after that, and she looked towards Tavros expectantly.

“Well, I’m always up for crime.” Tavros admitted. “But, uh, that doesn’t change the distance between the train station in Atlanta, and _us.”_

“It’s eight in the goddamned morning,” Dave announced loudly. He and Karkat had been so uncharacteristically quiet, that Tavros had nearly forgotten they were there. Dave went on. “It’s pretty early for Ancient Greek Skype and crime. I mean fuck, I haven’t even gotten dressed yet. How about we just eat some snacks for breakfast, and take a walk around town? We’ll think better on a full stomach and some fresh air.”

“I second that,” Tavros nodded.

“I third that,” Karkat was sitting on the recliner chair, frowning. “Now if you’d all _excuse me,_ I need to go get changed before any more absurd fucking shenanigans decide to take place.”

After letting everyone else get changed, and a short breakfast of chips and energy bars, the absurd fucking shenanigans resumed. The group scoured the motel room to collect all of their belongings and packed them all up. They even re-made the beds to try and hide the fact that they were there. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter whether somebody noticed, because if they were lucky, they’d be out of this town within the day.

Tavros packed all of his stuff into his backpack and slung it around his shoulders, looking up to where Jade and the others had the door propped open, and were getting ready to leave.

He followed them out the door, where it shut behind them with a click.

Now outside, the five of them examined their surroundings, and looked down at the parking lot. Karkat sighed loudly and muttered a complaint about how hot it was. Terezi tugged on Jade’s sleeve and Jade began to walk down the staircase outside of the motel that led down to the parking lot. 

Surprisingly, there weren’t very many cars in the parking lot, though, there was a cream-colored minivan parked in one of the spots, and a lady packing up a suitcase into the back of the car. She was middle aged, in her 40s or 50s, and very short with a soft round face, and a pastel pink hijab. She was humming to herself calmly as she packed up the suitcase into the minivan. But as Tavros and his friends walked by, she noticed them, and looked away from her car to examine them with a puzzled expression, but it was quickly replaced with a smile.

“Well good morning to y’all!” her accent was strikingly southern, which shouldn’t have thrown Tavros off after spending so much time in the south on this quest, but it still did. “How are y’all doing?”

“Very well, ma’am,” Dave responded, not skipping a beat.

She smiled. “Well ain’t that good to hear! It’s hotter than a billy goat with a blow torch out here.”

Tavros took a few steps to the back of the group, and nudged Terezi’s shoulder with his own. “Is this that thing Feferi talked about,” he whispered into Terezi’s ear. “Where people in the south just randomly stop you to have a conversation with you on the street?”

“Must be,” Terezi replied with a shrug. “I thought she was lying. Guess not.”

“You know,” the lady continued, “I was just heading over yonder to the Atlanta airport because I have a plane to catch this afternoon, but I reckon I’ve gotten ready a smidge too early.”

For a moment no one spoke. Tavros looked at Jade, and Jade looked at Dave, and Jade looked back at the lady. “Wait, really?” she raised an eyebrow. “That’s so weird, we were all planning to go to Atlanta too. Only for us, we need to get on a train.”

“Are you now?” She looked surprised. “Isn’t that funny. Well, are your folks gonna take you? You got a bus to get on?”

Jade bit her lip. “Ummm… well, we’re traveling on our own, so no. We… don’t actually have a ride to get to Atlanta, funnily enough. So… haha, yeah.”

“Uh-oh,” the lady frowned, furrowing her brows in concern. “Well that ain’t good. Y’all don’t need a ride, do you? Because I mean, I’m headed where you’re headed, and I’ve got plenty of time before my flight. I could always drop you off at the train station, if you need it.”

Jade’s eyes widened. “Oh! Well… sorry, give me a minute to ask my friends.”

Jade turned away from her and ushered the rest of the demigods to take a very step back and huddle up with them all, to discuss what they should do..

“What do we do?” Jade whispered, “This opportunity is really falling into our laps, here.”

“This is majorly sus,” Dave shook his head. “Normally I’d wanna say that this is just a nice lady worried about some runaway kids, but I’ve been attacked by a harpy and a cyclops these past few days, and I’m pretty sure there’s a lot worse that could happen as well. I don’t know if she’s any kind of like… normal, non-Greek weirdo, but she could be a monster and I’m not dying to take that risk.”

Terezi butted in, “No no no, she’s not a monster. I can always smell monsters. I sniffed out the cyclops hours before it attacked us, and figured out the harpy as soon as we got in your school. This lady has no monster scent. She’s mortal.”

“Whoa, hold up, are we just gonna completely forget about stranger danger?” Karkat looked appalled. “I mean, I get that like, none of us have both parents, but surely somebody taught you guys not to get in cars with people you don’t know, right?”

Tavros cleared his throat a little before he spoke, still in a hushed voice. “Good point, but like… we all have weapons. If she’s not a monster, then we’re pretty much safe.”

“And besides, we’re not gonna get an opportunity like this otherwise,” Jade said.

Dave sighed. “Oh fuck it, last night I walked through the woods at night, got attacked by a cyclops, technically robbed a Denny’s and broke into a motel. Getting into a car with a stranger is not nearly the worst thing we could be doing. What would be the worst thing… drugs? Yeah, probably drugs. We’re not doing drugs, so we should be fuckin’ thankful.”

Karkat pursed his lips, thinking hard. “Fuck, fine. I’ll do it but I’m gonna complain the whole time.”

The five of them looked up from the huddle. The lady looked a little confused and concerned, but still polite.

“We would love a ride to Atlanta,” Jade smiled. “Seriously, thank you so much.”

“Don’t even mention it,” she shrugged off the comment. “Oh, and where are my manners? I’m Ms. Paint. How could I forget?” she reached out her hand for Jade to shake.

Jade nodded, and shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Jade, and these are my friends, Terezi, Tavros, Dave, and Karkat.”

Each of them took turns shaking Ms. Paint’s hand. Even after a short conversation, Ms. Paint struck Tavros as the motherly type. He was probably the only one of the group to be able to notice that, since he was pretty sure the rest of them didn’t actually know their mothers. Morbid. But even so, Ms. Paint let them set their backpacks on the car floor, and bucks up in the car seats.

As she backed out of the parking lot, Tavros felt relieved. After so much disaster on this quest, after so much had gone wrong, he was glad that something was finally going not-so-bad.

⁂

The car ride was surprisingly pleasant. There wasn’t much traffic in the morning, and the car had air conditioning to keep away the southern heat. Jade sat in the front seat with Ms. Paint, Tavros and Dave sat in the middle row, and Karkat and Terezi were in the back. Ms. Paint played a radio station that was just a bunch of old songs from the 70s, and Tavros even knew a good portion of them. That sparked a conversation about music between him, Ms. Paint, Dave, and Tavros discovered that apparently Dave wrote his own music and had his own turntables. Tavros mentioned that he played guitar, and Dave joked that they should make a song together. Jade’s obvious anxiety lessened throughout the whole car ride, and even joined in on a lot of the conversation. It seemed like for once, in a world where demigods always seemed to have the worst of luck, this group had managed to find a genuinely nice, kind-hearted person to give them a ride to the train station.

Ms. Paint didn’t ask any particularly personal questions on the drive. Maybe she was just being polite, or maybe she thought that they were all a bunch of runaways in a bad situation (well, in Dave and Karkat’s case, that might’ve been true). The only rather personal thing she asked was “So, where are you headed once you’re on that little ol’ train?”

“New York,” Jade replied.

“That’s a long way!” Ms. Paint exclaimed. “You have money for the train tickets, don’t you?”

Tavros laughed nervously. “Funny you should ask that…” he was not about to let Jade lie about this again when they might actually get help. “We don’t. We thought we’d have enough, but we used it all just getting here, so we’re kinda stranded.”

“Oh no!” she cried, looking distressed. “Bless your hearts. Please, I can’t leave a couple of kids like you stranded in the big city. Let me at least pay for your train tickets and send you on your way.”

“Oh, ma’am, you really don’t have to-” Jade started to say.

Ms. Paint shook her head, “Nuh-uh, it would just be downright irresponsible of me to just let you loose like that. It’s dangerous!”

Tavros met Jade’s eyes in the car’s rear view mirror. Tavros just nodded, trying to reassure her. Jade looked away, and back towards Ms. Paint. Jade was very stubbornly independent, and all he wanted was for her to finally accept help now that she really needed it.

“Thank you, ma’am, we would really really appreciate that.” Jade finally said. “Thank you so, so, so much.”

Tavros nearly let out a sigh of relief.

“It’s the least I can do, darlin’.” Ms. Paint smiled at her.

After a long car ride, the group reached Atlanta, and Ms. Paint took the young demigods straight to Peachtree Station, just like she promised. Once they’d parked the car outside of the brick train station, Ms. Paint walked the five teenagers into the station to help them buy their tickets. Ms. Paint bought them five one-way tickets to New York (which were way more expensive than Jade expected them to be- so the demigods really would’ve been in trouble without Ms. Paint’s help), and she’d even given them some extra money to buy some snacks for the train ride. They’d really hit the jackpot of ‘southern hospitality,’ Tavros supposed.

Ms. Paint said a warm goodbye to them, and made them all promise to be safe. Jade thanked her profusely for helping them, but Ms. Paint brushed it off. Clearly, she was well-off if she was handing out hundreds of dollars to strange runaway children. Tavros was equally grateful, nonetheless.

And after all the panicking, and monster fights, and arguments, and derailing the quest; the five demigods boarded the train safe and sound. They took seats all around each other in the large train and set down their backpacks under their seats. Everyone was relieved, and even more exhausted. Jade sighed loudly and sank back in her chair.

“I’m never doing another quest like this ever again,” Jade mumbled.

Dave stared out the window as the train pulled out of the station. “So we’re really going to Camp Half-Blood? Wow… just, damn.” He looked over at Karkat. “I think it goes without saying that this is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened in my life.”

“You can say that again,” Karkat agreed.

Terezi, who was sitting next to Jade across from Tavros, leaned on her shoulder and yawned. Tavros put on his headphones, and gazed out of the window as the train was gaining speed.

They were New York-bound, with two baby demigods in tow. And in Tavros’s case, he was finally going home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck travel chapters all my homies hate travel chapters. luckily this is the travel chapter, and we can finally go to camp half blood now lol. but yeah i do hope you guys liked this, and im sorry i was gone for so long. i underestimated how busy schoolwork could make me, and it just made me so tired that i didn't have energy to write even when i did have free time.
> 
> but enough of the sad burnout shit!!! this was a good chapter. they committed crimes!!! i have officially canonized autistic tavros and nonbinary roxy for the reason of Because I Want To. we have met our first carapacian, Ms Paint!!! and if you think it's a little Strange that Ms Paint was so willing to help the demigods, dont worry there is a plot reason for that. whenever you are confused just assume i did it on purpose and have it figured out. all will be revealed, trust me.

**Author's Note:**

> You've reached the end! Don't forget to leave a comment, I love answering any questions or responding to any feedback. Thanks for all your support!  
> This fic is a side project, and updates less frequently. If you're interested in reading my main fic, with more frequent updates, check out the fic "Crash Course" on my profile!


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